


The Gray Jedi

by NebulousMistress



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Gen, Genderbending, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Mustafar (Star Wars), Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Other, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Pre-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Revan's Holocron, Sith Holocron, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, consensual body modification, far too much research, liberties taken with canon, the death of Snoke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:02:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22329019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: Kylo Ren stands over the dead body of his former master. Rey was gone, fled back to her friends. Nothing here went as planned. What in the Force was going on? How did the girldothat?!A journey of minds into the depths of Sith philosophies, the heights of Jedi hubris, and the spaces between.Spoilers for TLJ and TROS
Relationships: Knights of Ren & Kylo Ren, Knights of Ren/Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 39





	1. The Supreme Leader

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate title: What is a Force Dyad and what does that even mean?
> 
> This is Kylo Ren's journey to find out what a Dyad is. Expect liberties taken with the Force, a strange focus on research, some odd foreshadowing for TROS, and did I mention liberties taken with the Force?
> 
> I'll put the genderbending warning here at the front even though I expect it to take quite a while to get going.

“I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise.”

Kylo Ren stood before his master, the man who trained him after Luke Skywalker raised his blade in fear. Between them the girl, Skywalker’s current apprentice, who had also watched the man raise his hands against her in fear. This girl who saw so much of Kylo through the Force, connected to him even through uncounted parsecs.

Yet still Master Snoke sat upon his throne and gloated. “It was I who bridged your minds,” Snoke crowed. “I stoked Ren’s conflicted soul. I knew he was not strong enough to hide it from you.”

No, that wasn’t right. Kylo took his eyes from the girl and watched the perverse glee in his master as the old man spun words he used to take credit for…

For what?

Kylo Ren was confused. There was more to this, all of this, and he had no way to find out. The girl Rey was taught by Skywalker, even if she’d ever thought to ask he would never give her an answer due to his own simple fears. Snoke would be no help either, here he was trying to take credit for this connection.

Kylo had felt this before, on Starkiller. On Ilum’s surface. Not this strong, this clear, not yet, but that meant this bond wasn’t Snoke’s achievement. It couldn’t be. The most Snoke could have done was to prod at what was already there.

Rey screamed as Snoke tried to take Skywalker’s location from her mind. Pain blossomed behind Kylo’s eyes, her pain. He pushed it away to keep his mind clear and her screams turned to an agony akin to anguish as Snoke cackled in glee.

Ahch-To. The place where it all began. Images of the legendary island prison flooded his mind, the ruined temples surrounded by thousands of miles of empty ocean keeping all upon that island isolated within the Force. 

Snoke let her go. Rey fell to the floor, collapsed as though she hurt too much to stand. Her eyes rose to meet Kylo’s.

Her fury was beautiful. Darkness bubbled forth like oil from a poisoned well, her passions rising dark and strong. Despair, hatred, fear, anger, she embraced it all and he…

Kylo locked his knees and somehow remained standing. Her eyes bored into his as the wellspring of darkness in her rose, drowning her in its power, draining him of--

Wait…

This made no sense. Kylo felt the Force around and within him shift and change. The dusty dry feel of the light rubbed against his soul as his own darkness drained away. He tamped down the wonder, filing it away for later. First he had to survive this. No call to the light had ever broken through like this, felt like this, he had to keep it hidden. Iron-hard resolve clamped around his thoughts, focusing them on the single threat before him.

“My worthy apprentice, son of darkness, heir apparent to Lord Vader,” Snoke said, glorying in his victory. “Where there was conflict, I now sense resolve. Where there was weakness, strength. Complete your training, and fulfill your destiny.”

“I know what I have to do,” Kylo said, leveling his eyes on Snoke and the lightsabre carelessly tossed aside on the arm of the throne chair.

“Ben,” Rey begged, shaking her head.

“You think you can turn him?” Snoke demanded, laughing. “Pathetic child. I cannot be betrayed, I cannot be beaten. I see his mind, I see his every intent.”

He couldn’t tell her. Power began to return to him, darkness tinged with despair and he shoved it back down where it came from, back into her, lest Snoke see through his iron veneer. He saw her fury rise as he did so, a feral energy that he focused by drawing his own lightsabre, drawing her eyes to it even as he calmly twisted the sabre at Snoke’s elbow.

“Yes. I see him turning the lightsabre to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and kills his true enemy!”

Kylo Ren activated the sabre and Snoke shuddered. A gurgle escaped the old man as Kylo pulled the sabre toward him, slicing his own master in two.

Rey reached up and caught the sabre as easily as if she’d been the one to pull it.

But now was not the time to ask questions. Now was not the time to pull his darkness back from her in order to shed himself of her cloying light. Now she stood and they were surrounded.

He would dwell on this later. First they had to survive. 

*****

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren sat on his bunk. His sudden advancement in the hierarchy came with certain benefits. The gallery in the main room, a place for the chosen artifacts of his past finally given their proper venerance. The option of taking three meals every cycle instead of the more practical single ration. The soft bunk of silks and furs seemingly designed for indulging in the most carnal of Sith passions. Even the option of replacing his Knight’s uniform with something satiny like the capes his grandfather was rumored to favor.

But there was something else he wanted. He reached out with his mind to the single ship in all the galaxy that held the remains of the Resistance. There she was, a single mote of despair in a sea of dull despondency. He extended one hand to touch that despair, to pluck the strings between them.

Despair turned to fury as she screamed into the uncaring void, fury that wasn’t rightfully _hers_. He felt that most of all, that her fury came from him, stolen from him through this cursed bond. What right did she have to steal his anger? He needed that back!

“Through passion I gain strength,” Kylo whispered, reciting from the Code of the Sith. Sith teachings were quite explicit as to which passions might serve his strengths and what the serene oppositions to those passions were. Acceptance was one of the serene oppositions of anger. He buried his own distaste about the current situation and let his anger be opposed. “I accept the Resistance still exists,” he said, sending that calm serenity across their bond.

He could hear her cherishing that serene feeling like a gift. “We’re still alive,” she whispered. “The Resistance still lives. That’s something.”

Kylo felt her anger bleed away, dripping down through their bond back to him. He shuddered as he sat on his bunk. His reality came crashing back in on him and the overwhelming need to punch something nearly overcome him. He stood up and tossed on a cloak, grabbing his lightsabre as he stalked out of his quarters. The sparring floor always had stormtroopers who’d erred and needed to learn fear. Her anger thrummed through him, lending a bounce to his stride and a low growl in the back of his throat, power humming through him like he hadn’t felt since killing Snoke.

He would messily dismember something unwilling first. Then he would focus on figuring out what in the Force this was.


	2. Knights of Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to remind you, Kylo Ren at the end of _The Last Jedi_ was a monster.

Kylo Ren faced down a single stormtrooper in full armor. That armor was no protection from the spitting, sputtering red sabre, nor from the off hand curled in a claw that wielded something much more dangerous.

An entire squad of the dead, the dying, and the moaning lay before this single stormtrooper, the sole survivor of Kylo’s fury. Blood marred the white armor, arterial spray splashed across the thighs and a desperate handprint on the chest. The blank mask of the armor did nothing to stem the fear flowing from this single stormtrooper in waves.

That fear smelled sour, animal terror and fresh urine mixed with the metal-sweet smell of wet blood. Kylo inhaled through his mouth, tasting the scent on his tongue like a Loth-cat with lips pulled back in a predatory sneer. His breath sounded like that same cat’s purr as he let it out.

Anger gave him strength. Experience gave him the wisdom to wear black. His clothes stuck to his skin, slick and slimy with blood and sweat, with the deaths of dozens of would-be deserters.

The single remaining stormtrooper didn’t seem to notice or care about the blaster at hand. They fell to armored knees, hands raised in supplication.

Kylo slowly raised his blade, the flickering tip dancing between armored wrists. He twitched the blade, forcing those hands to separate from their prayer out of a pointless attempt of self preservation.

“One,” Kylo said, voice distorted under his mask. “All it took was one.”

The stormtrooper shuddered with what must be tears. There was no way to tell under the helmet. 

“One single defection lost us Starkiller Base,” Kylo said. “FN-2187 defected, broke one pilot out of Interrogation, and the Resistance stole Starkiller base from us. Every stormtrooper is important.”

Kylo drove his sabre blade through the chest plate of the stormtrooper. A pained gurgle was the only sound before the body slumped to the deck.

Kylo turned away from the carnage. “I wish you could see that,” he said to the empty and uncaring room. “You are **all** important to me.” He shifted in his sticky clothing, blood soaking through to smear the skin as his anger faded into a low thrum of contented power. That purr came back, issuing like a hiss as he deactivated his sabre.

A noise drew him from his reverie. Someone come to interrupt him?

No, wait, not that. Not a threat. A benefit. A janitor with a scrubber droid. “Clean this up,” Kylo ordered, waving at the floor around him.

The man in the jumpsuit bowed his head. The droid beside him whirred in annoyance, earning itself a kick to the side. “Yes, Supreme Leader,” the man said. “And the survivors?”

Only now did it hit Kylo that the room carried a soft symphony of agony, groans of pain, whimpers for mercy, pleas for life. Or maybe for death. “Let them live,” he said. Then he left, blood red footprints trailing behind him.

The blood flaked off the soles of his boots after a few levels; he could hear when the soft chirps of the scrubber droid stopped following him. He knew he looked a mess, a glorious mess covered in tacky drying blood with a dense miasma of spent plasma charges wafting behind him. The stormtroopers were fully armed and armored when forced to face him, equipped the same as they were when they failed their commanders in the field. Their aim meant it wasn’t the fault of training that so many failed in the field, it must be something else. Some other aspect of their training. If only Captain Phasma hadn’t been killed aboard the _Supremacy_ , she’d know how best to keep the stormtroopers in line.

Ah well. The past could not be helped. That which lay there was dead to him, he had to remember that. His present was here. The First Order was unquestionably his and if General Hux ever questioned him again he wouldn’t stop at merely choking the man. The Knights of Ren were his as well and he would see them as feared and respected in the First Order as he was.

If they wanted it. He had doubts some would accept the fear he laid at their feet.

The doors opened onto what might once have been meant as a cargo bay. Instead a large gym stretched before him, weapons stored in racks along one wall, benches along the opposing wall where most of his Knights lounged. Most, not all.

Kris-fer Ren stood in the middle of the floor in full armor, cloak surrounding her. The long spear in her hands glinted metal-dull in the harsh lighting. Her black mask gave nothing away, a flat blank black with neither decoration nor holes. She moved and the spear moved with her, twisting to slam the butt of the hilt into an imagined enemy. She danced back and circled, blade bobbing. She raised her weapon above her head and brought it down in a punishing strike before twisting it, gouging off an imaginary head as she dropped low and lurked behind. She lunged, stabbing out to fend off another attacker then swinging her weapon in a wide arc to clear the battlefield.

Each of his Knights had their own unique style, their own favored weapon. Their own favorite way to kill.

Kylo had seen her in battle, striding forward with that spear in one hand, tapping the ground before her with its blunt end. The moment her enemy dropped his guard she struck, dropping the spear to both hands as she brought it down and flicked. If the neck didn’t cleave she considered it a personal insult.

Kylo stood a few steps into the gym. He knew full well this made him a valid target, trusting in the skill of his Knight as she used her spear to vault across the room, rolled, and ended with the blade of her spear at his throat.

They both paused there, predator and prey, dimly aware of the catcalls and applause from the benches. 

“You’re covered in blood,” Kris-fer said. “It’s not yours.”

Kylo leaned back on one hip, unable to suppress the purr in his voice. “How do you know it’s not mine?” he asked.

“When it’s yours you come to us feral and snarling,” Kris-fer said. She pulled her weapon back, allowing Kylo to keep his head, maybe even his dignity. “You’re too pleased with yourself for it to be your own blood.”

Kylo chuckled darkly before stalking around her. He could feel her through the Force as she followed him with her senses.

His Knights of Ren were all Force-sensitive though proper training was neither common nor respected. He’d won the right to lead them through skill of arms and personality, through tactics and effort. His own training in the Force had little to do with his position among the Knights.

“That why you didn’t hit him?” Cardo asked. Cardo Ren stood away from the group, a scrub-cloth in his hands as he wiped sealing grease into an armor plate.

“Not all of us wear more armor than a stormtrooper,” Ap’lek said. Ap’lek Ren stood up and plucked his halberd from the weapons rack. Its handle stretched long behind him as he gripped it from the middle of the shaft. “But don’t worry, I’ll hit him.”

Kylo bared his teeth in gleeful challenge as he ducked under Kris-fer’s spear and took his own old weapon from the wall. The beskar steel glinted in the dull lights of the gym as he held the broadsword backhanded. Blood dripped from the hilt, squeezed from the soaked gloves he still wore, staining the crossguard and running down the fuller as he stalked toward the middle of the room where Ap’lek had begun to circle.

The gym fell away in Kylo’s mind, the loud stamping and shouting fading from his senses. The only important thing in this room was his opponent with the halberd.

Apl’lek struck first, his long weapon giving him control over the battlefield. He raised the halberd like a common ax and swung low, carving out space to move. Kylo stalked outside that space, moving in as the swing began to slow. He ducked the pommel of the halberd, the polearm’s back end wielded like a staff, and slashed out with his broadsword.

Ap’lek brought the pommel down, breaking the sword’s swing, before leaping back to gain space. He thrust the spike of his halberd out before shifting the shaft in his hands to pull back, grabbing at Kylo with the hook of his ax.

Kylo twisted away from the grab and changed his sword grip, letting it fall to a natural grip. He parried the next few stabs from Ap’lek’s thrusts before swinging to toss the halberd wide.

Ap’lek leaned into the swing to bring the pommel of his halberd up, just missing a strike to Kylo’s jaw. He spun the halberd over his head to bring the ax back around to face his opponent and cleared his mind.

Kylo watched Ap’lek relax into the battle and felt the result, tiny motes of thought that weren’t his own. Feint left, charge right, strike from above, defend, parry, tiny thoughts that would spell doom by indecision in a lesser mind. Kylo relaxed into them as he let Ap’lek’s mental intrusion wash over and then off of him like an ocean wave.

What happened next was unexpected.

What Kylo expected was what always happened. His grip would fall into his favored backhand as he charged past all the moves Ap’lek had set up in his mind, overpowering the man and forcing him back to concentrating on his own performance.

Instead Kylo shifted his grip, both hands moving to the hilt of his broadsword. He swung awkwardly like this, an unfamiliar stance and a strange style he’d used once before.

That indecision gave Ap’lek the chance to strike. He brought the pommel of his halberd up, catching Kylo in the jaw and throwing the man to the floor.

The gym went silent.

Kylo lay looking up at the ceiling, watching it all spin. His jaw hurt. His teeth hurt. Mostly his pride hurt. Faces swam into his vision, his Knights with their masks removed. Shock and concern swirled down at him as the ceiling stopped spinning. He waved them away and sat up.

“That’s not right,” Ap’lek said, clearly disturbed by his victory. “Kylo, there’s something wrong. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Your style changed,” Trudgen said. Trudgen Ren looked on with a decidedly unnerving mix of fear and desire. “Styles don’t change. We all have a style. Yours changed.”

Kuruk Ren stayed where he perched on the benches. “Our styles are integral to who we are,” he said. “Yours changed. There’s more than you here. What is it?”

“Wait, you see it too?” Kris-fer demanded.

“Nobody is seeing anything,” Vicrul snapped. Vicrul Ren still held his scythe. In a rare turn of events the fear that radiated from him was his own. “Especially you, Kris.”

Kris-fer hissed at him from behind her blank mask. 

They fell quiet again as Kylo got to shaky feet and moved to the benches. “I’m fine,” he said.

“You don’t feel fine,” Kuruk said.

“I’ve hurt myself worse than this fooling around in bed,” Kylo said, deadpanned.

Trudgen snorted. That seemed to ease some of the tension, or perhaps the tension eased when Vicrul stopped spreading his miasma of fear. 

Kylo looked from Knight to Knight, their bare faces revealing their feelings for all to see. Each Knight of Ren had their own unique style in their fighting. The idea that a style might change suddenly, without warning, was impossible to imagine. It went against everything the Ren taught them.

“It’s happened before,” Kylo admitted, looking back down at his hands. He could feel his Knights recoil in indecision before coming closer. He felt Cardo’s heavy hand on his shoulder, Ushar’s hand on his knee, Trudgen sat next to him and leaned into him like a large Loth-wolf. He could feel it when Kris-fer and Kuruk both turned their foresight on him and began to pluck at the strings of the Force, trying to figure out where each one went.

“Snoke’s throne room,” Kylo supplied, wondering how far Kris-fer and Kuruk would be able to follow those strings and where they would lead.

Ushar Ren scowled and pulled away. “You got your ass handed to you by a Jedi wannabe,” he scoffed.

“No you didn’t,” Kris-fer purred. She pulled her mask off to reveal her scarred face, the red glass balls filling the empty sockets where eyes once were. A grin blossomed over her face, teeth bared in glee. “He never expected you to turn Sith on him.”

“But what happened after?” Kuruk asked. “I don’t understand this…”

Kylo took a deep breath. His Knights, his friends, they knew enough on their own. He could tell them the rest, right? “I’m not sure I do either,” he admitted. “I’m not sure **how** it happened but… There’s a bond between myself and the Resistance girl. Rey.”

“Strong enough to talk to her?” Vicrul asked. Kylo shot him a questioning look. “You argue with things,” Vicrul explained. “Might be her?”

“Might be,” Kylo agreed.

“What happened?” Cardo asked.

Kylo Ren told the story of what happened in Snoke’s throne room. How he killed Snoke with his grandfather’s own sabre. How Rey and him stood back to back surrounded by Praetorian Guards. Here he faltered, how could he possibly explain what he didn’t fully understand himself? It was all a feeling, moving in unison with someone else, their styles merged as one. Knowing if he dared think about what was happening to him they’d pause and they’d both die. Giving himself over to the push and pull of whatever this bond was, sinking into something that both was and was not himself. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt whole, complete, at real peace. And then...

“Then we split apart,” he said. He looked them all in the eyes, or thereabouts, one by one. “She fought like me. And I like her.”

“How?” Ap’lek asked.

“I don’t know,” Kylo admitted, looking down again.

“Does she have a decent style?” Kuruk asked.

Kylo gave him a calculating look. The question seemed innocent enough but ‘innocent’ was not a term that fit any of his Knights. “I’m not sure,” he said carefully. “I don’t have the--”

Oh. _OH…_

Kylo realized what Kuruk was really asking and grinned. He got up, extracting himself from the reach of his Knights, his friends, and picked up his broadsword. He took a deep breath and sought out the unfamiliar, that easy grace and strange lightness on the other side of his bond. The two-handed grip of his sword felt natural as he raised it. “Let’s find out,” he said with a purr.

The Knights of Ren pulled their masks on and grabbed their weapons, gleefully forming a circle around their leader.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren may be a monster but he's not a solitary monster. He is the leader of the Knights of Ren. All but one of the Knights herein are canon Knights. I needed to add at least one more because all the canon Knights are dudes and I require more than just dudes. For Reasons...


	3. Patronage

The officers took their meals in exquisite state rooms with attentive waitstaff. When the ship was quiet meals became drawn-out affairs with multiple courses of plates that never seemed to empty and brightly colored drinks involving mind-numbing and tongue-loosening liquids that burned the throat.

It reminded Kylo of banquets with his mother, senators all vying for power and seeking information on their opponents. It was no different now, generals coveted the same thing as senators: power.

Kylo Ren avoided it. Let his generals jockey for his attention like apprentices trying to prove who was the favorite. He took his meals in the sitting room of his quarters.

A woman brought him his meals, long and thin with fresh bruises and a determined expression. She held her head high every time, pleased with herself as though she’d won this position in battle.

These meals were luxuries he only afforded himself once per day. Let General Hux gorge himself on this much finery at every opportunity, it reminded Kylo of Leia. Still, this same woman served him with the air of a fighter just come from a difficult fight. Today it was a black eye and a left arm that shook ever so slightly.

“What’s your name?” Kylo asked after the eighth day of this.

The woman looked down, hiding her expression.

“Tell me your name,” Kylo said again.

“Inara,” she said, looking at the floor. She looked up at him, something like fear in her eyes. “We’re not supposed to say anything,” she explained. “The other officers don’t like it.”

Kylo understood. Those in power preferred to believe they were alone with their machinations. Snoke’s Praetorian Guard served under the same silence. He nodded and returned to his meal.

Food like this was a luxury he hadn’t had since his mother sent him for training. Fruits and vegetables cut so the skin and seeds were still visible, as if to remind him he were eating the real thing. Bread made of grains instead of nutrient pastes. The flesh of an animal roasted and shredded, muscle fibers still visible and chewy underneath the heavily spiced sauces served with it all. It was a far cry from the ration bars available to most of the crew, nay, to most of the galaxy.

Even so he couldn’t eat much of it. Too much made him feel ill. Maybe it was too long since he’d attended one of Leia’s banquets. Maybe this much rich food spilled through the bond, a scavenger from Jakku would never have seen such foods like this much less tasted them.

“Talk to me,” he said. 

“S-supreme Leader?”

“Where were you from?” Kylo asked.

Inara looked down again, dragging her foot in circles on the floor. “I was taken as a child. I wasn’t fit to train as a stormtrooper so I became kitchen staff.”

“Yet you can fight,” he observed.

“We all fight in the kitchens,” she said. “We don’t eat what we don’t fight for.”

That made sense. Her pride at serving him made sense as well. It meant she got his discarded plates all to herself. Those serving the other officers had much less opportunity, some of the generals were legendary for eating everything set before them only to purge most of it later. Kylo could appreciate such cruelty but not the waste.

“I see,” he said, leaning back away from his half-finished plate. Glistening vegetables and sticky white grains doused in yellow sauce tempted him but there were three more courses he was expected to taste.

Inara took the plate. She had a look that Kylo had once interpreted as a desire to serve. He knew now it was the anticipation of a proper meal. 

*****

The  _ Finalizer _ cut through hyperspace like a fat bird, the eerie blue glow shining through every window. Kylo Ren stood at such a window, the brightness stinging his eyes as he stared into it.

Behind him, the Supreme Council sat waiting uncomfortably. The official conference table stood on the  _ Steadfast _ , currently deployed in the core systems. This one was nothing more than a proxy. Holograms replaced the living bodies that sat at their own proxy tables in their respective battlegroups scattered wide across the galaxy.

“Sir, the Resistance is destroyed,” said one such hologram. General Domaric Quinn protested the waste of resources on chasing a few scattered remnants. Ren was familiar with the man’s objections.

“Their leadership still remains,” Ren said.

“Without support the Resistance will perish,” said another hologram. General Bellava Parnadee was currently stationed on the  _ Conquerer _ to oversee the culling of some Outer Rim world. “We can hasten that death.”

Ren nodded. The Stormtrooper program was a long term project, taking children before they could grow up into unruly adults who would demand things like rights or a voice. It would eventually starve the Resistance of resources but in the short term it might incite the very dissent the Resistance fed off of. “Keep your cullings to replacement rates,” he ordered. “There’s no reason to decimate these planets prematurely.”

General Parnadee seemed almost disappointed. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

“Meanwhile, the Resistance still finds succor in the Mid Rim,” said General Armitage Hux. Of all the Supreme Council he was the only one aside from Ren aboard the  _ Finalizer _ . 

“General Pryde,” Ren snapped.

The hologram of Allegiant General Enric Pryde looked over with distinct interest. “Yes, Supreme Leader?” he asked.

“The  _ Rectifier _ is near Gan Moradir, is it not?” he asked.

“It is, Supreme Leader. Humanitarian missions. The locals remain grateful we’ve chosen to continue the Empire’s good work.”

“Leave a ground team to finish with that,” Ren said. “I need you to follow a lead.”

“I’ve heard of no such lead,” Hux protested.

Ren ignored him. “Concentrate your search around Kashyyyk.”

General Parnadee nodded. “The Wookies have always been a nuisance,” she agreed. “Hulking brutes.”

“And intensely loyal to the Old Republic,” Pryde agreed. “Yes, Supreme Leader. It will be done.”

Kylo Ren turned his back on the table. The holograms gently fizzled out as the meeting adjourned. All but Hux. Instead Hux stood, contemplated speaking, then turned his heel and left.

Ren knew he had no proof. He had no real leads. All he had was the phantom feeling of furry arms and the faint echo of Wookie trills in his ears. That was enough.

*****

The gym was unused.

Kylo was not accustomed to seeing the Ren gym unused. Each Knight’s weapon remained in its display mounting ready to be picked up for practice, defense, or attack. Instead all seven Knights sat on the observation benches whispering conspiratorially.

Unwelcome nervousness rose up in Kylo’s belly. He pushed it aside, feeling it drain away. Annoyance bubbled up in response, her annoyance. Fair enough, he could use her annoyance. “Have you chosen a challenger?” he asked.

His Knights pulled away from each other. Ushar decidedly did not jump at being discovered, Vicrul did not yelp, and Cardo did not blush. If they had then this couldn’t be a challenge and Kylo had no idea what else this might be. He’d all but admitted his style was poisoned by his Force bond with the girl, the Code of Ren demanded his leadership be challenged. There was no other option and now he was going to be forced to kill one of the few people in the entire galaxy he considered his friends. At least he’d given them all a taste of his poison to give them a fighting chance. The Knights of Ren would survive after him, same as they always had.

Ap’lek was not fidgeting nervously. Kris-fer was not kicking her feet petulantly against the benches. Trudgen was not staring at the ceiling and Kuruk was certainly not looking like a wise ass.

Unless they were?

Kylo pushed the thought away. Of course they weren’t.

“You’ve gone Sith on us,” Kuruk said. “So we got to thinking.”

“We used to find Sith things all the time,” Ushar said, a little too enthusiastically.

“Much more than Jedi stuff,” Cardo agreed. “Dozens of Rens have found it so.”

“Even when the Jedi were active in their bloated Republic,” Vicrul said. “They hoarded their secret knowledge, even and especially from their own padawans.”

“Wait, how do you know that?” Kris-fer asked.

“The last Ren was a padawan before the Cull.”

“Whereas the Sith leave things all over,” Kuruk said. “Makes it easy for later Sith to come along and collect it all.”

Kylo was confused. This… wasn’t a challenge. Maybe it was a raid? It had been a long while since he’d gone on a raid with his Knights. His last raid he followed the Ren like the rest of them. Finally leading a raid might be fun.

“So we got you a gift!” Ap’lek crowed.

“By the way, where’d he go?” Trudgen asked, looking around.

“Food, I’d wager,” Cardo said.

“You always wager food,” Kuruk said. “I’ll find him.” Kuruk grabbed his weapon from the wall and left the gym.

“Bring him back in one piece,” Kris-fer called.

“He will,” Cardo said.

“He’d better,” Vicrul said, cracking his knuckles.

Kylo’s confusion had not abated. More confusion bubbled up, her confusion at the fact that he was confused compounding his unbalance. He tried to push it away but the wellspring of their bond spat it back at him. He could feel conviction on the other side of that bond but he just couldn’t reach it. Too much triumph on her end. What was she doing over there? Why did it feel so warm and fuzzy and not just in a metaphorical sense?

“Cardo, you owe me food,” Kuruk called.

“That’s not what I meant!”

Kuruk Ren strode triumphantly into the gym with his trophy, a man. A short man with a well-trimmed beard and shaggy sand-colored hair. The man looked around himself with distinct interest, as though it hadn’t yet occurred to him he might be in danger.

“He’s a professor at,” Trudgen began then paused. “I’ll let him say it.”

“But then he’ll never shut up,” Kris-fer whined.

Kylo glanced back at his Knights and they seemed to get the message, he wanted them quiet. It didn’t keep them from exuding smugness but it was a start. He turned back to the small man. “And you are?” he asked.

The man smiled. “Professor Beaumont Kin of the Lerct Historical Institute,” he said proudly. “Well, associate professor. On sabbatical. I won’t be eligible for tenure for another ten years at least, and that assumes I find a more ‘socially acceptable’ field of study. I’m a historian.”

Kylo looked at his Knights. He could feel his own exasperation bouncing off of the bond with nowhere to go. “You got me a historian?” he asked.

“You must be…” Beaumont’s eyes went wide before he bowed with a flourish that bordered on the absurd. “My Lord, I didn’t recognize you. Although to be fair, most Sith lords have a particular look about them. You’re extremely pretty for a Sith. The scar helps. And the spots. They really break up the illusion of perfection that so many light-side Jedi were expected to uphold.”

Kylo had the distinct urge to end this historian right here.

“Ah, yes,” Beaumont said, taking a surreptitious step back. “I’m sure you’d rather hear about my qualifications rather than… ahem. Well, yes. My area of expertise is the Jedi Civil War. I’ve always had an interest in Darth Revan, in how someone could rise to such heights in both the light and dark sides of the Force and still we know so little about them; we don’t even have concrete information on basics like gender! Your mask is modeled after Revan’s, is it not? I can see the similarities in the propaganda posters, the face plate isn’t as complex but the details over the eyes make all the difference.”

Kylo’s urge to end this historian lessened. 

“Of course Revan wasn’t the first, Revan’s Jedi Master became Darth Traya before becoming the Gray Jedi Kreia. I have a hypothesis that she tried to create a certain type of force bond with her final apprentice, an artificial dyad. Of course it didn’t work right. After all, Darth Traya died and rumor says her apprentice continue to live in some fashion.”

“Enough,” Kylo said.

Beaumont went quiet. He didn’t stop looking, though, and Kylo felt oddly scrutinized. This little man knew more than he let on. Perhaps he would allow the man a chance to prove himself useful.

“Do you have knowledge on the modern Sith?” Kylo asked.

“What, the Empire? Of course. I remember its fall. The public burning of Vader’s Palace on Coruscant made me so mad, even as a child. All the knowledge of the old Jedi Temple would have been moved there for Darth Vader’s personal collection. Thousands of years worth of holocrons lost!”

“Not necessarily,” Kylo allowed. He bared his teeth in what might have passed for a feral grin. “He had a second palace on Mustafar. I know where it is. Imagine what we might find.” He purred as he addressed his Knights. “Prepare your weapons for soon we raid.”


	4. The Paths of Mustafar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fortress Vader survived the fall of the Empire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind me. I'm just over here adding rules of architecture and volcanology research and a semblance of plot and context to a 30 second throwaway scene from TROS.

The TIE Echelon descended through the turbulent atmosphere of Mustafar. Dark clouds of ash and steam clouded the view as Kuruk Ren followed the paths in the Force down to their destination.

Kylo stood behind him, helmet under his arm as he watched the clouds part into darkness. The omnipresent red glow beneath provided the only light on the night side of this infernal world, its twisted life fed solely by the dark side of the Force.

Beaumont Kin watched their descent from an observation window, his armored hands pressed against the portal glass. “This is where Darth Vader nearly met his end,” he said reverently. “Rumor said after the Jedi Temple was destroyed, Vader would order any captured Jedi be brought to this world to suffer as he did.”

“Brutal,” Kris-fer whispered.

Cardo shuddered. “I can imagine. Burning alive, the dark side sustaining them even beyond the point of merciful death, forced to experience that agony until it drove them insane.”

Beaumont looked back at Kylo and gestured to all their armor. Even Beaumont wore a suit of custom-fitted Stormtrooper armor. “That’s why we’re…”

“I expect we’ll be at war with the elements as much as the natives,” Kylo warned.

“There are  _ people _ here?” Beaumont sounded shocked as he pressed his face back to the portal glass, as though he could see anyone from here.

The Echelon crested the low curve of a gigantic shield volcano, an impressive sight opening beyond. 

An electrical storm overhead lit the entire Gahenn Plains and Kuruk casually reached over to turn the navigational computer off. The Echelon descended into an eerie silence as the computer’s noises all… stopped.

A vast plateau stretched below them, a river of lava lazily oozing across it. This river approached a spire of obsidian polished to a mirror sheen, red accents lost in the wan red light of the lava channeled through the spire. The spire sat precariously on the edge of a cliff, the lava channel ending in a burning cascade that appeared to have slowly eaten its way back into the cliff under the spire. The cascade ended in a pool below and the river continued on, cutting its way through the fabled Corvax Fen.

“Are those trees?!” Beaumont asked, pointing into the Fen. “How?!”

Kuruk grunted with effort as the ship jolted to one side, nearly straying from the path he saw.

Kylo picked Beaumont up by the paldrons of his fitted armor. He didn’t speak, only hissed low and quiet.

Beaumont didn’t say another word until they landed. Kuruk turned the nav computer back on, unleashing a whole series of squealing alarms. Heat sensors blared, the atmosphere outside was barely breathable, the crust was unstable, volcanic hazards all over the map, it was nothing they didn’t already know.

Kuruk nearly collapsed against the control panel, gasping like he’d run across the whole  _ Finalizer _ twice. Kylo patted him on the shoulder and put his helmet on. He gestured for everyone else to do the same.

The Echelon’s ramp extended and the Knights of Ren disembarked, weapons ready. With one out of place stormtrooper. They stepped out onto a basalt plain, a dusting of ash bringing a touch of dull brightness to the iridescent reds and burnt yellows veining through the stone. Beaumont turned on the flashlight mounted on his plasma rifle and the basalt around them sparkled, tiny crystals shining in the rocks.

Kylo pointed out the fortress before them, the obsidian tower seeming so much taller from this angle. He brought Kris-fer to the front. She took a deep breath, visibly centering herself as she brought the butt of her spear down upon the stone. She took the lead, tapping the stone as they went. Kylo followed close behind her, his lightsabre at the ready. As though weapons would help them against terrain like this.

She led them past horrible skylights, pits in the thin basalt crust where the lava beneath could be seen flowing fast and deadly. Past fumaroles of acrid yellow gases that coated the viewports of their helmets and could have dissolved exposed flesh. Past twisted piles where lava emplaced onto older flows like it had climbed there.

Past burnt and twisted pieces of armor half-submerged in solid rock. It may once have been white.

Kylo followed her until she stopped, a mote of fear shuddering through the Force around her. “What is it?” he asked

She tapped her spear onto the ground before her. That ground fell away, crumbling as the lava flow beneath them tore away at the crust where she tapped. “Back up five paces,” she warned.

Nobody questioned her as she stepped back, as they all stepped back. The ground where they had just stood fell away, carried off by the flow.

Kris-fer fell to her knees, her spear falling to the ground. She gasped from the exertion.

“Is it safe here?” Kylo asked.

She nodded.

“Rest here,” Kylo ordered.

“It’s gonna be hard to get across that,” Cardo mused, looking out over the lava flow. It was too far to jump, even for Trudgen. 

Kylo looked up and down the flow, sensing the boulders submerged in the lava’s grasp. “How’s everyone on boots?” he asked.

“Not good,” Kuruk admitted. He wore the softest boots of them all.

“I can carry you,” Ushar offered.

“No, you’re too heavy combined,” Kylo said, testing the strength of those boulders with the Force. “I’ll do it.”

“We couldn’t have landed closer to the fortress?” Beaumont complained.

Kuruk shook his head. “Path led me there,” he said.

“‘Path’ what path?!”   


“The Path I followed.”

Beaumont looked from Ren to Ren.

Kylo sighed beneath his mask. “The electrical storm would have shorted the nav computer,” he explained. “Kuruk can fly without one by following Paths in the Force.”

“Kris-fer sees those same Paths in the Force,” Ap’lek said. “It's how we got this far without ending up in the lava.”

“We all sense the shadows in the Force,” Vicrul said. “Some better than others. Some darker than others. But we all dwell in those shadows.”

Beaumont’s blank stormtrooper gaze fell on Kylo, staying there.

Kylo got up as he felt Kris-fer regaining her strength. “We’re almost there,” he assured her before moving to stand on the edge of the lava flow. A line of boulders would dam the flow, flooding the banks and blocking their escape route. He’d have to use one boulder at a time. While carrying Kuruk. He took a deep breath to center himself.

Despite the recycled air of his rebreather the air smelled sweet. “We’re close,” he allowed. “Kris-fer, you’re up first.” He reached out to the Force and brought the stones to life.

Kris-fer stood up and dutifully walked toward the lava flow. For one terrible moment it looked like nothing would prevent her from wading in to her death but a sudden float of rock rose from the lava. She stepped on that float before jumping to a boulder that swung before her. It sailed across the lava to the far side where she hopped off gracefully, tapped her way to a boulder, then sat down to wait for the rest.

“Professor,” Kylo called.

“I-I can’t do that,” Beaumont stammered, fear exuding from him in waves.

“Then close your eyes.”

“That’s not reassuring.” Beaumont muttered something about insane Force-users and stepped onto the boulder that bobbed invitingly at the lava’s edge. He fell to his knees, gripping the rock as it carried him across, before scrambling off gasping from the terror of it all.

Ushar went next, then Vicrul and Trudgen.

“Will you be alright?” Cardo asked before taking the next steps himself.

Kylo took a slow breath. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore and that cloying sweetness filled his senses. The darkness of this place was getting to him. He reached for it and pulled, shuddering as he felt the Force respond. “I’m fine,” he said, thankful the voice modulator of his helmet covered the purr.

Cardo clapped a hand on his shoulder then stepped across.

Finally only Kuruk and Kylo were left. Kylo leaned down so his fragile comrade could climb onto his back, like a father giving his child a speeder ride. Then he summoned his power to bring the boulder to him.

Ferrying so many had not done the rock many favors. Nor did this much weight. Kylo hissed as he felt the heat of the stone through the soles of his boots. He felt the stone begin to crumble as he hopped off onto the flow’s bank.

One foot didn’t make it and Kylo roared as he felt the skin sear. He clamored up the bank on hands and knees, his hands screaming in their own pain at the heat of the rocks beneath him.

“Kylo!”

Kylo wasn’t sure who shouted but he knew it was Cardo’s hands on his own drawing the heat away from his skin. It wouldn’t heal the burns but it would prevent them from growing worse. Those skilled hands ran down his left foot, pulling the excess heat from his boot. The pain turned from a sear to a mind-numbing throb as the burn stabilized.

“The kriffing ‘path’ led us to this?!” Beaumont demanded.

“We’re alive,” Kris-fer snapped.

“We’re fine,” Ap’lek insisted.

Kylo grunted as he stood. His hands hurt, his foot felt like it had just been on fire. Which, to be fair, it had. He wouldn’t be able to take the boot off until he had enough bacta gel to replace the skin. “We’re almost there,” he said. “I trust the path back will be less painful.” He glared at Kuruk and Kris-fer, knowing they would both feel the weight of his gaze. 

“This had better be worth it,” Vicrul said as Kris-fer took the lead again, tapping her way across the volcanic hellscape.

The obsidian tower loomed closer now. Close enough to touch.

*****

Blaster fire shone against obsidian, turning the black glass into flashes of lava bombs.

Kuruk led the way, darting around corners to fire into these strange cultists. Their ashen-white robes set them apart from the dark fortress walls, their crude blasters and their ironwood clubs no match for better weapons. 

“Now what?” Beaumont shouted.

Vicrul hit him across the back of the helmet. Shouting was unnecessary over the helmet radios.

“Take the fortress,” Cardo said.

“Kill the squatters,” Kylo agreed.

“Figure out who they are after they’re no longer shooting at us,” Ap’lek said. He concentrated as a group of cultists ran toward them. The cultists slowed in their sprint before turning on each other long enough for Kuruk to kill them one by one.

Kylo’s lightsabre made short work of stray blaster bolts, knocking them away to leave tiny marks of red in the black glass, marks that quickly cooled to a new black sheen. “They have a leader,” he said. “They have to.”

“This way,” Kris’fer said, pointing down a blank corridor. She led, Kylo limping after her. That limp turned to a lope and then a stuttering run as he felt the same path she followed. 

That path led him right into the bulk of the cult. Clumsy blasters turned on him, many firing wild in their panic. Kylo roared in challenge and leapt into the fray, feeling his Knights running to catch up to him. Blaster bolts sizzled past him from behind as Kuruk’s blaster cut swathes a bit too close for comfort. A single stormtrooper’s blaster fired into the melee, its bolts peppering into confused cultists. And then the others joined the fray, blades and spears and axes raised.

The fortress was theirs.

*****

Kylo carried his helmet in one hand as he limped through the room. Shelves upon shelves stood like a library in this windowless room. Beaumont took notes on a datapad, his own helmet left in the main room where the other Knights lounged, recovered, and likely discussed how they were all going to get off of this planet with their newfound loot.

Whatever loot the other Knights found in Fortress Vader, Kylo found his treasure right here.

The shelves were full of artificial crystals. Holocrons.

“Vader must have had the layout of these chambers committed to memory,” Beaumont mused aloud. “I don’t see any sort of room map or a catalog anywhere.”

“He wouldn’t have needed one,” Kylo said. “He was a Sith Lord, strong in the Force. Any time he came in here the Force would tell him what he needed.”

“What, like a command?”

“The Force doesn’t command me,” Kylo growled. “The Jedi might have accepted that but they failed.”

“So more like a suggestion?”

“A sense,” Kylo allowed. “Like knowing where you dropped the keys to your speeder last week.”

“I could never remember where I put those.”

Kylo hummed in vague distraction. He held out his hand and closed his eyes. A deep breath brought that odd sweetness to his nose and he reached out with his senses to what he needed to find.

The room was full of what he wanted. Shiny holocrons filled with ancient and forbidden knowledge. Dull, poorly constructed holocrons built only a few decades prior filled with the voice of his grandfather. Power, attachment, the past and the present and the future.

One mote of power drew him down an unlit corridor. There, tucked between pyramids and cubes, stood a single spire of clear crystal extending from a ball of red stone. Kylo reached for it.

It felt like ice in his hands, ice that turned to fire that turned to something akin to ecstasy.

“That’s not a normal construction,” Beaumont mused. “I wonder if it’s important.”

Kylo purred as he held it close to his chest. He turned one yellowed eye on Beaumont and hissed.

Beaumont backed away.

Kylo brought the holocron out of the stacks. This. This is what he came here to find. He knew it.

And now he had it.

*****

“So what is it?” Vicrul asked.

The main room of Fortress Vader overlooked the blasted surface of burning Mustafar. Beyond the clouds the fat visage of the gas giant Jestefad rose above the horizon. An empty bacta tank stood in the middle of the room as though to give the former occupant access to the view. Here the red accents of the black basalt spire gleamed where cultists had polished it clean of ash.

Kylo held the misshapen holocron in his hands while the others sat around and ate. “It’s a holocron,” he said.

“Doesn’t look like any other holocron I’ve ever seen.”

“It feels weird from here,” Kris-fer said. “Like it’s old. Its contents are older than the holocron itself.”

“Can that be done?” Vicrul asked.

“There were techniques for copying holocrons,” Beaumont mused. “They weren’t often used. They often resulted in the holocron going unstable.”

“Unstable how?” Ap’lek asked.

“Not explosive-unstable. Sentient-unstable. Untrustworthy. The older a holocron’s knowledge the more likely that holocron was to gain a personality.”

The room spun ever so slightly, reality blurring around the edges as Mustafar fell away. Kylo knew what this was. He’d felt it often enough over the past year. Ever since Starkiller. The voices of his Knights grew muddled, faint and distant as someone else drew his attention.

The girl. The scavenger. Rey.

The bond snapped into full awareness and the voices of his Knights changed again. He could hear Kuruk shushing the others as Trudgen pulled away and Beaumont merely watched in confusion. They all knew it was happening again. Even the professor. Was he so obvious?

“What happens now, then?” Rey demanded. She sounded exhausted.

“I suppose that depends on you, doesn’t it?” Kylo asked. He placed the holocron between his feet, draping it in his cloak to keep it from her gaze. Not that she would know what such a thing was.

“Why is this still happening to us?” Rey asked. She fell onto something that may have been a bench or a chair or knowing Kashyyyk it may even be a gigantic mushroom. “Snoke is dead. Didn’t he say he did this to us?”

“I expect he was simply taking credit for what already existed,” Kylo said. “I’m sure you know the type.”

“I’m sure I do.”

Kylo bristled. That was an insult, he just knew it.

He could feel her sadness from here. She was looking at him, really looking. “Your eyes,” she said. It sounded less like a marvel and more like dull acceptance. “What did it, Ben?” she asked, though she still sounded so tired. “Killing Luke? Taking control of the First Order? What?”

Kylo knew what she meant. The yellowed eyes of a Sith had a strange languid feel he’d never known before, like they were coated in oil. He felt it here on Mustafar, so close to the seat of his grandfather’s power. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. “You felt the dark side once,” he said instead. “I felt it in you after I killed Snoke. You screamed with it. Gloried in your kills. Feasted on their deaths. You were so beautiful, Rey. Why cast it aside?”

Confused shock crossed Rey’s features. “You’re not saying I had anything to do with this?!”

Kylo chuckled darkly. “Now who’s taking credit for things already there?” He picked up his own ration bar, unwrapping it.

Rey scowled and grabbed it from his hands. He watched in disbelief as she tore off the wrapping and bit into it. At his shock she stopped chewing and looked at the bar in her hands. Her own confusion bled through the bond, causing the room to fade again as the bond broke, leaving him sitting there with nothing in his hand and a holocron at his feet.

The room came crashing in on him to the tune of a thousand questions. But the one he had no answer to was the one they kept asking. How did she do that?


	5. Darth Revan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liberties have been taken with the [Telos Holocron](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Telos_Holocron).

Cardo Ren and Kuruk Ren argued over the wreckage before them. Fortress Vader had an old space port with a few salvageable pieces, including what might once have been a troop transport more than large enough to get all them back to the Echelon. Pieces of the engine sprawled across the flight deck while the two argued over just how much needed to be repaired and how much was extraneous.

The remainder of the Knights of Ren watched, took bets, and sparred. Their cloaks were gone, sacrificed to carefully wrap the 37 potentially active holocrons salvaged from Vader’s collection.

Thirty eight, technically. But Kylo had not yet packed away the crystal spire and its ball of odd red stone. Let the professor fuss over the spoils, let his Knights repair their way out of this lava trap. He had something he had to do first.

The holocron pulled at his hands as the sweet smell of rot, of fecund life, of the dark side filled his nostrils, threatening to make him gag in his helmet. He pushed down his bile and concentrated on the Force. He could almost feel it, tendrils of darkness rising from the floor to curl around him like vines, wrapping around him and the holocron in his hands. Feeding them both.

The holocron began to glow.

A cacophony of voices filled Kylo’s head, each vying for attention. He gritted his teeth and bore it, refusing to drop the glowing crystal with its twisted hologram that shifted from person to person to person as each steward of the holocron insisted on being the first to speak.

“I am Plagueis, I--”

“I am Sidi--”

“I am Tene--”

“I will  **NOT** be denied I am Bane!”

“I am--”

“No I!”

Just as suddenly as it began it stopped and Kylo gasped. The hologram took the form of… himself?

“I do apologize,” the hologram said in an even voice. It almost sounded amused. “I appear to have collected a multitude of Gatekeepers over the past millennium.” It looked him up and down and chuckled. “I have an imitator. I would have your name, Acolyte.”

“Kylo Ren.”

“A Ren,” the hologram mused. “You are not the first of your Order I have met.”

“I would have your name,” Kylo said.

The hologram cocked its helmeted head. Details began to show through the aged emitters. The helmet and chest armor showed the hint of intricate filigree. The androgynous shape did not clarify as the cinched waist showed a broad chest and flared hips, broad shoulders and long legs. The cloak must have been delicately fine in life, even more so than Vader’s favored satins. “Why ask? You know who I am. Your own helm betrays your knowledge of me.” It held out its hands as though inviting delicious scrutiny. “I am Revan.”

“Kylo, I think we’re ready to take the transport for a test flight. I want to make sure it can get some lift before we all pile into it.”

Kylo glared up at Cardo and growled at him for interrupting. But when he looked down the holocron was quiet. Silent. He took a deep breath, the sweet stench fading from his senses. “All right,” he allowed. “Run your tests.”

Soon they would be on the Echelon bound for the  _ Finalizer. _ Soon he could do something about these burns.

*****

The bacta boot itched.

Kylo sat alone in his quarters. The majority of the holocrons were in a lab where the professor cataloged with glee, sorting each by age and construction. Ten so far were likely to have been built by Vader’s own hand.

Beaumont Kin had all of the holocrons in his clutches. All but one.

Revan’s holocron sat on the table before Kylo. It was something to focus on, something that wasn’t how much he desperately wanted to slide something long and thin into the bacta boot to scratch the intense itch of healing flesh. He reached for the holocron before reconsidering. This was Revan, a Dark Lord of the Sith. From what Beaumont gushed, Revan singlehandedly decimated the Jedi and saved the galaxy from the Mandalorians, ruling it all in a great Sith Empire the likes of which Palpatine could only mimic. An empire that only fell when Revan was kidnapped by Jedi and tortured into obedience, an obedience that lasted a few short years before it all began again.

Though he had to admit, Beaumont was right about one thing. Kylo’s own helm and armor looked like he’d modeled himself after Revan. It hadn’t been intentional. Kylo simply followed his instincts, letting the Force dictate his armor. Strange that the Force would model his visage after this particular Sith lord.

He wrapped his hands around the red stone base of the holocron and  _ pushed _ , drawing power from the near torturous itch. The itch burned through him, consuming him, taking his mind and…

“Ah, there you are, Acolyte of Ren.”

Kylo took a deep breath. The holocron sat open before him, the hologram of Revan tall enough to look him in the eyes from the table.

“Without your helm, I see,” Revan continued. It paused to take him in, scrutinizing him. “Tell me, Acolyte, does Bane’s foolish ‘rule of two’ still dictate the Sith?”

“I killed my Master,” Kylo said.

“And does that make you the Master?” Revan asked. “What have you learned of your Master’s death?”

Kylo snorted. “Avoiding hubris,” he said dryly.

“Hubris,” Revan mused. The hologram shifted, growing rigid like a doll as it seemingly recited something from its memory like a droid. “Hubris remains one of the few gray emotions. It is its own passion, its own serenity. All those who feel and use the Force would be wise to avoid it, or better to use one’s enemy’s hubris against them.” The hologram snapped out of its recital, falling back in a natural pose.

Kylo cocked his head as he grew calculating. As alive as this hologram of Revan seemed it was still a machine. At best it was a human mind imprinted onto a droid, at worst it was a copy of a hundred memories all blurred together. “What are your parameters?” he asked.

“I am tasked with answering questions on the philosophy of the Force,” the hologram said in a flat voice. “I am versed in the comparative theologies of both the light and dark sides of the Force. I am versed in the history of the Sith. I am versed in rituals and techniques using the dark side of the Force. I am versed in the Code of the Sith.” The hologram shook off its stiffness, its voice losing its flatness. “I could let Darth Bane do all the talking,” Revan threatened. “Now that would be a lesson in hubris.”

“I apologize,” Kylo said, bowing slightly. He looked at the hologram with his yellowed eyes and added a single word. “Master.”

The hologram made a sound that might have been a purr. “It’s a start,” Revan said. “Perhaps you might be capable of learning. The last dozen Sith lords have been hopeless. But first, I need information. What is the state of the galaxy? What of the Jedi and the Sith?”

Kylo detailed the past few decades, telling the story of the Jedi’s fall to their Chosen One Anakin Skywalker. Of the Emperor's rise to power. Of the fall of the Empire at the hands of the last Jedi. Of his own training by that Jedi and the sundering of Luke’s own treasured plans. Of the Knights of Ren, the First Order, of Luke’s death at his own hands. Of Snoke’s death.

“And now there’s only me,” he said. “And the scavenger.”

The hologram listened intently, or as intently as a semi-sentient program could. It nodded at the appropriate times, asked the appropriate questions, made noncommittal noises to inspire Kylo to continue his tale. By the time he was finished detailing the galaxy’s recent past two full mealtimes had elapsed and he hadn’t thought to partake. A single plate of simple fare, slices of bread and roasted vegetables, sat on a side table where Inara had left them. Kylo reached for the plate, spreading a purple and fleshy vegetable onto a slice of bread.

“And what of this scavenger?” Revan asked.

“The last Jedi’s final apprentice,” Kylo said dismissively. “I’ll get around to it. I just…”

“There’s something about her, isn’t there?”

Kylo stopped mid bite. He put his lunch back onto its plate. “I never mentioned she was female,” he said suspiciously.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Why?” Kylo demanded.

Somehow the faceless hologram looked smug. “There is a Je’daii prophecy. Older than galactic civilization itself. The Je’daii began as a dyad, they would end as a dyad.”

“A what?”

The door to Kylo’s quarters opened. Beaumont Kin did not wait to be invited. He held a holocron in his hands, a blank and boring pyramidal shape. “I found a collection of maps, I thought you might be interes…” He trailed off mid-word as he looked up and saw the odd crystalline holocron glowing and active. And standing there… “Is that Darth Revan?” he asked.

Kylo gestured toward the holocron with its oddly inanimate hologram. Strange, the figure had been much more animate before the professor’s entrance.

“Darth Revan!” Beaumont nearly squealed the Sith lord’s name. He put the holocron in his hands down before nearly throwing himself at the table for a closer look. The easiest way to examine the holocron without touching it was eye level, on his knees with his eyes at table height. “Oh there’s so much about him we still don’t know! We don’t even know if he’s a ‘he’! I’ve seen the research on the subject and traced it back to its original source, the Jedi Master Karpyshyn, who basically just said ‘because I say so’ and that’s not science!” Beaumont took a breath before turning wide, hopeful eyes on the Revan hologram. “Were you a man or a woman?” he asked.

“All those who knew my gender were killed or were trusted to secrecy,” Revan said.

“Yes, yes, yes, but surely  **you** know?”

“I do. But I will not tell.”

Beaumont punched the table. He immediately fell back to his haunches, shaking his hand at the pain.

“Why?” Kylo asked.

“I have my reasons,” Revan said. “I mentioned the dyad that would end the Je’daii. A being balanced between the extremes of light and dark, passion and serenity, male and female. When the Jedi and Sith schismed, there were no more dyads. The Jedi believed a dyad would only appear upon the eve of their destruction. I attained the rank of Jedi Master before becoming a Dark Lord of the Sith. I took that prophecy and used it to make the Jedi fear as I killed them. I made them believe I was the dyad come to destroy their order. I nearly succeeded.”

“Wait, so…”

The hologram spread its arms to gesture toward its holographic form, faceless and neither male nor female. Elements of both genders seeped through the filigreed armor and the flowing cloak. “But I was no dyad,” it said. “Nor was Darth Traya. Nor any other of my time. For the dyad is prophesied to destroy  **all** the Je’daii, both the Jedi and the Sith.”

“But there are no more Jedi,” Beaumont said. “I mean, if the First Order propaganda is to be believed…” He trailed off and looked to Kylo.

“It is,” Kylo said. “I killed Luke Skywalker myself.” He neglected to give the true details of that battle. “Revan, what is a dyad?”

The hologram felt smug again. Kylo had a bad feeling about this.

“You are aware of the Cosmic Force and the Living Force, are you not?” Revan asked.

“Yes,” Kylo said.

“No?” Beaumont admitted.

Revan and Kylo looked at one another. Kylo gestured for the hologram to explain. He knew the explanation from the Jedi texts, he was curious what this ancient Sith had to say about it.

“Allow me to give you an idea, then,” Revan said. The hologram pulled its cloak around itself as it stood like a Jedi Master giving a lecture to a room of padawans. Perhaps in life it once had. “Imagine a plane above the galaxy and a plane below. Above is the Cosmic Force, below is the Living Force. Energy flows between the two Forces, each feeding the other. Energy flowing from the Cosmic to the Living produces life, energy flowing the other way ends that life.”

This was not what the Jedi texts said at all. “The Jedi teach something very different,” Kylo said. “The Jedi say life feeds the Living Force, which in turn feeds the Cosmic Force. There is no cycling of energy.”

“I am not surprised, my Acolyte.” Kylo could have sworn the faceless hologram smirked. “The Jedi have always been single-minded in their view of the Force. It allows them to dismiss any views beyond their own.”

Kylo remembered that fact quite well. So many of his questions as an apprentice were silenced by his uncle’s stony glare.

“The flow of energy to the Living Force from the Cosmic is considered Dark while energy flowing to the Cosmic Force from the Living is considered Light. This cycle explains how life arises in the womb, why the strongest Jedi Masters seem to die of old age before reaching their middling years, why the dark side corrupts and twists its practitioners as it has begun you, my Acolyte.”

Kylo seemed taken aback at that. He glanced at Beaumont.

Beaumont gave a pained look, like he was trying to give an easy smile. There was nothing ‘easy’ about it. “Yellow is a good look for you?” he offered.

“The eyes are often the first sign of corruption,” Revan agreed. The hologram returned to its lecture. “Life runs rampant inside the body of the dark practitioner, twisting and transforming them into more than they were. A true Sith would never shy away from such a transformation, instead welcoming the corruption into their bodies as surely as the Jedi are taught to give in to their deaths.

“In this cycle, life arises. Cosmic Force is pulled into the Living Force, forming a mote of power. That power coalesces, gaining sentience. That sentience becomes a living being, one single mind among trillions in this galaxy. Upon its death it returns to the Cosmic Force and is subsumed back into what it once was.”

“Not always,” Kylo admitted.

“A strong force user can twist the Living Force, enabling their sentience to remain within the Living Force for a time,” Revan admitted. “Often for years. Of course, I do not expect a Jedi would learn such a power. Maintaining life after its death is a power of the dark side. Few Jedi would condone such acts.”

“You’d be wrong,” Kylo said. “Unfortunately.”

Revan chuckled. “You have experienced this first hand. Be sure to remind your ghosts the source of their power. I would wish to hear you describe the looks of horror on their faces. I always enjoyed that particular horror.”

“Next time you talk to Revan I’m taking notes,” Beaumont whispered.

“Now, you asked what a dyad was,” Revan continued. “Imagine that same mote of Force coalescing in the Living Force, gaining sentience. Once it is sentient, rip it in half.”

Kylo winced.   


“Yes, I imagine it is agony,” Revan mused with quiet glee. “The two halves are now each one half of a person. Those halves are forced to become two living beings, both existing in pain and despair, never understanding why existence hurts so much. What happens, do you think, when those two beings meet here in the galaxy?”

Kylo had a bad feeling about this and he had no idea why.

“A Force bond?” Beaumont asked.

“Yes. But not just ‘a’ Force bond. In my studies I found these two people would share feelings, images, touches, more. One male, one female, in exact balance of one another, one Light and one Dark.”

That was a lie, Kylo had an idea why. It sat like a cold stone in his belly

“Although, light and dark are only the most fluid of qualities. As one rises in the light the other will sink into darkness. They will trade light and dark like veils, rising up and sinking down on a whim as no Jedi or Sith has ever experienced before. Over time they’ll learn to trade emotions, feelings, passions and serenities. Soon senses, sensations, they will see through each other’s eyes. They will trade physical objects across parsecs through their bond alone. Eventually they will learn to trade physical traits.”

Kylo could feel the unease inside him, spilling out through the well of his own bond. Answering confusion bubbled up, mixing with Revan’s words to form something akin to a real terror.

“My Acolyte, are you unwell?” Revan asked. “You look troubled.”

There was no possible way a faceless hologram could look so terribly pleased with itself. It studied him with an intensity that bordered on physical lust.

“Is there a… limit to this bond?” Kylo asked.

“Yes, my Acolyte,” Revan purred. If it weren’t a hologram Kylo felt like Revan would be draped all over him, studying him, pawing at him, itching to consume him. It was not a gentle feeling. “I know where it ends. That is  **why** I made the Jedi believe I was their Androgyne. Because that is what the dyad becomes. Or it dies.”

Beaumont finally looked away from the hologram only to be taken aback by the unabashed terror on Kylo’s face. “What's wro-- oh…” Beaumont’s shoulders fell as he realized it too.

Kylo and Rey were already snatching physical objects from each other’s hands across worlds.

“The last Jedi and Sith are dead,” Revan said. Kylo could hear something like delight in the hologram’s even voice. “All that’s left is you. And her. The Force will not be denied.”


	6. Stolen Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revan has slept for millennia inside a crystal holocron, they must be wrong. They can't possibly be right.
> 
> Right?

Cardo and Kuruk Ren sat on the benches in the Ren gym, watching the carnage before them.

Kylo Ren was angry.

Kylo fought with his broadsword, his lightsabre abandoned in favor of the less lethal heft of his practice weapon. His Knights came at him one at a time, charging at him with their weapons at the ready. Kylo swung his sword against Ap’lek’s halberd, tossing the axe aside as he grabbed Ap’lek’s neck and bodily tossed the man to the floor. He spun to counter Ushar’s club strike, catching the haft of the club with the crossguard and twisting, ducking under Ushar’s legs to roll the larger man off of his feet entirely.

Kris-fer brought her spear down, an overhead slice. Kylo dodged the blow, feeling it cleave the mat below them. She snarled at him as he swung his blade backhanded. She jumped back, the blade of her spear kept pointed to his middle.

Trudgen swung his war cleaver. Kylo jumped back, the thick blade far too heavy to simply block. He darted in as Trudgen’s backswing took time to correct, punching the man in his side and then darting back out.

Vicrul slid his scythe into the melee and twisted it, catching Kylo’s blade in the hook. Kylo roared as his sword left his hand and clattered to the floor.

“Point to Vicrul,” Kuruk said.

Vicrul held his weapon aloft and grinned.

Kylo growled and picked up his weapon as his ‘defeated’ Knights got to their feet and limbered back up.

“That makes three for Vicrul, two for Ushar, and one for Ap’lek,” Cardo said.

Kylo stretched and reached out through the Force. The bond between himself and Rey bubbled with discontent. He kept pulling on it even as he felt so much fall back through, like trying to pull water from a well using only his hands.

Revan was wrong. There had to be some other answer. His own life wasn’t exactly an ideal but it was his and he wasn’t about to lose what little he had to a scavenger from Jakku. He pulled, trying to drag himself back from her, as much as he could take.

Kylo raised his blade, the sign to begin again.

Vicrul swung his scythe at Kylo’s feet. Kylo jumped over the swing. Ushar’s club was ready for him as he landed, the strike aimed at Kylo’s thigh. Kylo brought his sword down to deflect the strike, driving it into Vicrul’s overbalanced attack. Both men went down. Trudgen held his giant blade like a ram, using the entire length as his weapon as he slammed it into Kylo’s sword over and over, driving him toward the wall. Kylo backed into the wall, waiting until Trudgen pulled back for a more punishing strike. He ducked below and to the side, leaving Trudgen to slam his weapon into the empty bulkhead.

Ap’lek was waiting for him, swinging his halberd in one hand in a trip attack. The blade caught Kylo’s foot and pulled, yanking him off balance.

Kris-fer took the opening, knocking him in the jaw with the butt of her spear. Then she struck, holding him down with her weight and using her spear as a garrote. The shaft of her spear pressed against his neck, forcing his head back as he struggled.

“Point to Kris-fer,” Kuruk said.

She pulled off of Kylo, letting him breathe and climb to his feet.

“That’s three for Vicrul, two for Ushar, one each for Ap’lek and Kris-fer,” Cardo said.

The girl still kept Kylo from himself. The bond kept pulling back, kept draining himself away to aid her and she didn’t even have a clue. She had no idea what this bond was, what it meant. She hastened their mutual ends like this with her unthinking actions. He would not let himself end simply because of her foolishness. He reached into the bond with all of his will and  _ pulled _ .

Something broke. What before felt like a well draining through his fingers now became an endless morass sucking him beneath. The bond held him still as it pulled him in even as he struggled, each attempt to pull free driving him under. He drowned in what rose up from the bond, screaming bubbles up to a surface he could no longer see.

He became aware of himself on the floor of the gym, curled on his knees with his hands around his middle as his throat hurt from screaming. He gasped for air, a strange pain growing inside him. A pain he’d never felt before.

Strange, after his training with Snoke he’d thought he’d felt every pain a human body could produce. This wasn’t one of them.

Kylo slowly uncurled and looked up.

He did not like the utterly shocked looks Kuruk and Kris-fer gave him. Kriff, if they could see it then…

“You okay?” Ushar asked.

Kylo got to his feet. He tried to stand but this new pain focused in his belly, extending strange tendrils out down his thighs and up into his chest. His back felt like he’d been trod on by a rancor. “I’m fine,” he lied.

“You’re not fine,” Kuruk said.

Kylo growled at him.

“He’s not fine!” Kuruk insisted.

The other Knights looked confused then worried as they all turned their eyes on Kylo.

Kylo pulled his weapon to him, letting the Force bring it to him. The blade felt heavy, dragged on his shoulders as that pain throbbed through him. If he knew what this pain was he could use it but like this? He dragged his sword up, forcing his protesting muscles to obey. The sign to begin again.

His movements were stiff, unyielding as he fought off his Knights. He snarled as Ushar held back, as Vicrul watched, as Ap’lek allowed himself to be disarmed.

Kuruk shook his head as Kris-fer hooked the blade of her spear behind Kylo’s calf. She pulled, dragging his feet out from under him. She twisted her spear, bringing the blade to his throat.

Silence fell on the gym as they waited for Kuruk to call the point. He didn’t say a word.

“Point to Kris-fer,” Cardo said, breaking the silence.

“You sure you’re alright?” Trudgen asked.

Kylo huffed.

Kris-fer studied him, studied the image of him as she saw him through the Force. The bond between him and the girl snaked off into oblivion, pulsing and open like a raw wound. Pain flowed freely through it, pain she was familiar with.

“Chamory tea,” she said.

Kylo looked at her like she’d just spoken nonsense.

“Chamory tea,” she said again. She glanced at the Knights around her. “Unless you’d rather get yourself a stud.”

Kylo pointedly did not think about how Trudgen, Ap’lek, and Vicrul all seemed to stand straighter and grin while Ushar definitely did not  _ preen _ .

She let him up.

Kylo got to his feet. He left his weapon on the floor where it lay as he most assuredly did not flee.

*****

The pain was not getting better. In fact it somehow felt worse. Kylo Ren allowed Inara to place whatever the generals had decided to eat today in front of him. It smelled both delicious and nauseating at the same time, some combination of green things, spices, and the pale flesh of an animal. He couldn’t bring himself to eat.

What poison had this bond put into his mind? Was this pain even real? He could feel Rey on the other side of it, she felt pleasantly surprised at something. Even ecstatic. There was a freedom to her than he wanted, it wasn’t fair that he felt like this.

“Is there anything you require, my Lord?” Inara asked.

What had Kris-fer called it… “Chamory tea,” he said.

Inara visibly paused in her movements. “Are you sure, my Lord?” she asked. “I would not expect you to--”

“Just get it for me,” he snapped. His arms curled around his middle and he hissed as another spike of pain rose through him.

“Of course, my Lord,” she said, ducking out of Kylo’s chambers.

A few minutes felt like an eternity. The pain didn’t follow a rhythm he knew, didn’t pulse with his heart or with his breath. Instead it seemed to follow some chaos he didn’t understand, like gas sloughing off of a dying star in fits and waves and great searing arcs.

The door to his quarters opened and Kylo heard the soft footfalls of his kitchen servant. Inara placed the tea in front of him.

It smelled foul.

“It tastes foul,” she warned. “But the fouler it is the better it works.”

Kylo pulled himself into a precarious seated position and looked at her. She knew about this potion too? He took the hot cup in his hands and wrinkled his nose at the steam’s distinct astringent scent. Yet somehow even the smell was enough to ease some of the tension in his spine. He took a draught and shuddered at the taste. It did indeed taste foul, like sour blood.

But he could feel it working. He sat up and drank more, finishing the cup. He set it down with a distinct ‘ugh’ and a shake of his head. 

The pain lessened but it didn’t leave. Instead it burned like a hum beneath his mind and his movements, omnipresent but not obtrusive. “What is this?” he asked no one.

“Chamory tea is usually used to ease motherly pains,” Inara said. “The pains a woman feels to prepare her for the agony of childbirth.”

Rey’s sense of freedom made a sudden twisted sense. Kylo hid his dread as he realized what must have happened. She pushed this pain off onto him. She did this to him.

Inara placed his next course in front of him, a particularly delicate dessert. The bitter beans were crushed and mixed with sugars and cream to yield a grainy mousse, more cream whipped to a thick sweet foam with rich berries decorating the darkly sweet dessert. It was one of his favorites, one of the few dishes he never left uneaten. He’d even licked the dish clean at times.

He picked up his spoon and considered it. He also considered Inara and her hungry gaze. She still fought to serve him every day, the bruises testified to how fiercely she fought for the duty. Serving him benefited her as well, her frame had filled out nicely over a few scant months as she defended her right to gorge on his uneaten leftovers.

Something Han told him once came to mind. ‘Anyone can bribe with money, boy. Credits will never fail you. But the best bribes are something your mark considers more valuable than money. Your job is to find out what that is.’

Kylo dipped his spoon into the mousse and let the taste coat his tongue. He closed his eyes and purred, savoring it.

“As Supreme Leader, you know I must keep secrets,” he said, looking Inara in the eye. “There are things I know and do that may never leave this room. That leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. I am, after all, rarely alone. Tell me, Inara, what would you do to keep such secrets?” He licked the spoon, pulling every mote of taste from the metal as though it were his last.

“I would keep your secrets as though they were my own,” she said. “I would die to keep your secrets.”

Kylo nodded. He dragged his spoon through the dessert once more, leaving the spoon in the dish. Then he looked her in the eye and pushed the dish across the table. He gestured with his eyes for her to take it, to sit across from him and to take what she desired.

“I will ensure you never have to fight for this again,” he purred. “No one will dare question.”

Inara shook as she sat down. She touched the sweet cream foam with a timid finger and tasted it. Kylo sat back and gave her only one slight nod. That was enough for her to pick up the spoon and devour with abandon.

Yes, she would be silent for him. No one would know about this.

*****

“You stole her maternal pains.”

Kylo paced in front of Revan’s holocron. Revan’s visage stood above the crystal with its characteristic smug. If he didn’t know any better he’d say it was laughing at him. “I did no such thing!” he hissed.

“No?” Revan was enjoying this. There was no other explanation. “My foolish Acolyte, you said yourself, you reached through this bond to pull it all back. Am I to believe this was unrelated?”

“I have to find a way to separate us!”

Neither Kylo nor Revan paid any attention to the professor in the corner frantically taking notes on a datapad. Beaumont wisely kept quiet.

“By stealing her maternal pains,” Revan said in an attempt at something deadpanned. “Did you manage to steal the required organs as well? Or simply her pain?”

“She pushed it onto me!” Kylo hissed. He ignored Revan’s second set of questions, he didn’t even want to think about it. He willed the holocron to believe him. It didn’t work, the holocron was just a device. A device with an ancient Sith Lord inhabiting it.

A Sith Lord who was apparently laughing at him.

“If I can pull myself out of her I can at least attempt to separate us,” Kylo insisted. “I can shut down this bond. At least find a way to control it!”

“And what if in your haste you draw more of her through?” Revan asked. “I never did find out how the dyad attains its final form. Clearly you are two separate bodies. I wonder what would happen if you pulled too hard? Could you pull her entirely through into you?”

Kylo’s pacing stopped and he turned a look of utter horror onto Revan.

“Or would there be a backlash and you get pulled into her?” Beaumont pondered. He dropped his datapad as his breathing stopped.

Kylo’s yellow eyes flashed as he held a curled hand up, slowly squeezing the professor’s throat.

“He makes a point, Acolyte. Release him.”

Kylo snarled, not wanting to let go. But it wouldn’t do to break his professor. He let go, instead turning his fury to a support beam of the bulkhead. He punched the beam repeatedly, putting distinct dents into it. The pain felt good, felt more real than this pain the girl pushed off onto him. Even if he had stolen it.

“There has to be more to this,” Kylo said, his voice dangerously even. He turned away from the dented beam and reset the knuckles in his hand. The pain shot through him, focusing his mind, before that pain and that focus all drained away. As she turned around and stole his power, his darkness, his _pain_ , the same as he’d stolen hers. He could hear the radio cries of stormtroopers falling dead, feel vines whipping around as she extended **his** power into the forest itself to turn it against the invaders. The battle of Kashyyyk was not going as anticipated. “More than just an end.”

Revan’s hologram flickered out as the holocron lost power. Or perhaps the hologram could shut itself down at will now. 

Beaumont rubbed his neck as he took a deep breath. “I have a proposal,” he allowed.

Kylo turned hard brown eyes on the professor.

Beaumont took another deep breath, likely savoring it in case Kylo decided to deny him that ability again. “My Lord, you are my Patron,” he said. “My research is yours. My conclusions are yours. I access your artifacts at your pleasure, for which I am grateful.”

“Your proposal?” Kylo said, ending what would likely have been a long, drawn out, and largely uncomfortable attempt at flattery by stating the obvious.

Beaumont cleared his throat. “I feel the current situation puts us, most of all you, at a disadvantage, my Lord. Clearly Lord Revan has an idea what this bond is but even he, uh, they don’t know what happens next. No one does. That means we’re forced to observe and record and hope the Force makes sense.”

Kylo was familiar with tests.

“That means we need to observe from both sides.”

Kylo snorted. “How?”

Beaumont straightened his shoulders and sat up, pulling himself up to his full height. It was not impressive. “I request your permission, my Lord, to join the Resistance.”

Kylo wasn’t sure whether he should start laughing or choke the life out of his addled professor.

“You mentioned Rey has access to ancient Jedi texts,” Beaumont said quickly, trying to talk his way out of another choking. “I can translate them and have copies sent to you, much better translations than any droid could ever manage. I can observe her, keep detailed notes, I can send those notes to be correlated with your own actions! With your leave I can run tests on her, tests specifically designed to determine just how far this bond has already gone, you’ll feel them from here! I…”

Kylo stayed silent, waiting to see just how much his professor would promise.

“You already know where they are, I don’t need to act as a normal spy,” Beaumont continued. “They’ll be looking for a normal spy, someone reporting combat things and troop movements and tactics and you already know those! You can see them through her eyes, hear them through her ears, you don’t need a normal spy. You need someone who can get close to her, be her friend, guide any research she’s doing, maybe find a way on her end to… to…”

“To what?”

“To whatever you want! Whether it’s to fully separate or to steal her life and be alone or to pull her to the dark side to be yours! I can use her Jedi texts to make these things seem like her best option. Whatever option you might want.” Beaumont ran out of words and gasped for air, refusing to look away.

Kylo considered it. Most of the holocrons he’d accessed were useless, diaries or personal grudges or individual philosophies. His grandfather’s holocrons were more interesting, though he would prefer to study those alone. The professor had skills enough to be welcomed into the depleted Resistance.

Leia might be a problem. But then, Jedi who followed the light didn’t deign to look into unshielded minds without cause. Feh. That had been a lie when Luke said it then, it was a lie now.

“I speak Shyriiwook?” Beaumont offered in a small unsure voice. “The wookies will trust me. I’m small.”

“I’ll pull the  _ Rectifier _ back from Kashyyyk,” Kylo allowed. “You’ll be dropped at a spaceport in Onderon. Intelligence says the Resistance is collecting to make a raid on Kashyyyk from there. I will allow the raid and the Resistance to escape. I expect your first transmission before I can see their next base through her eyes. If not, I will run a test myself. How much power can I push though to Rey and how messily will her victim die.”

Beaumont knew he would be that victim. “Of course! Of course of course, I understand, my Lord, I do!” Yet despite the threat he seemed ecstatic, eager to get going. He put his datapad on the table next to Revan’s inactive holocron. “I, ah, wrote a proposal in case you didn’t kill me outright! I have to get everything ready! Kriff, that means I have to go unarmed, they’ll recognize any weapon I bring!” Beaumont left, all but running out of Kylo’s quarters.

Kylo picked up the datapad and glanced at it. The open file promised ten thousand lines of text. If it weren’t of a potentially personal nature he’d hand it off for Hux to read. Instead he had to read it himself, if only to make sure it wasn’t something he would have to destroy.

Or maybe he’d destroy it anyway. Drop it out the back of his TIE Whisper at range, Kuruk could use the target practice and the  _ Finalizer’s _ weapons crew could use the distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genderbending is in the tags already yes? Yes? Okay good. What, you thought I meant something costume-y and fun?


	7. Anakin's Temptations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have cribbed mightily from the Clone Wars. I have twisted the realm of Mortis for my own purposes. 
> 
> I have done horrible things to the Jedi and I have no shame.

Kylo Ren sat in front of a burned skull.

His grandfather’s helm, the burned skull still trapped within the melted plasteel, sat unmoving on the pillar used to enshrine it. It never moved. That would be ridiculous, it was dead.

But in the Force…

The helm glowed in the Force, the burned skull beneath acting as a conduit. The voice from beyond dripped with darkness, the power his grandfather wielded in life after throwing off the shackles of the Jedi. But the voice wasn’t quite right.

Something wasn’t right here.

He needed a distraction.

*****

The  _ Finalizer _ floated dead in space. There was nothing nearby to challenge it, no natural hazards to avoid. Not even an asteroid belt nearby to provide some amusement. Therefore it became the perfect opportunity to create amusement.

A single TIE Whisper, heavily modded, left the  _ Finalizer’s _ hold. It dropped from the great mothership’s belly and lazily flew off without the escort demanded by all protocol. It darted about in a few pointless maneuvers, dodging and spinning and in general burning the carbon scale out of its neglected engines. It flew to five million kilometers from the  _ Finalizer _ , making lazy arcs and weaves in and around that sphere of distance before dropping a single object behind it. The Whisper began its pointlessly long route back to the ship, dodging and banking as though making a run on the  _ Finalizer _ itself. Instead it pulled up at the last moment, skimming the  _ Finalizer’s _ deflector shields as it buzzed open windows with curious faces pressed to them.

The Whisper returned to its perch in the  _ Finalizer’s _ hold where an entire team of mechanics waited for a report. It wasn’t often the Supreme Leader himself insisted on flying for no reason, it had to be to test their newest modifications.

Outside, five million clicks distant, a single datapad floated with a sensor transceiver strapped to it. The transceiver began to blink.

*****

Kylo Ren led his Knights in full armor to the  _ Finalizer’s _ bridge. Heads turned and the crew stared. Even without their weapons the group of them inspired awe, fear, and jealousy. Kylo could hear the whispers in their voices and in their minds. The Knights of Ren were legends, monsters, vultures, hangers-on, useless, and magnificent.

General Hux sneered when he saw the group invade the bridge. Kylo smirked under his mask. Excellent.

“This is an unscheduled weapons test,” Kylo announced. “General Hux, tell me how this ship is armed.”

“You know full well what this ship is capable of,” Hux snapped.

“Humor me,” Kylo purred. He raised his hand ever so slightly, pressing on Hux’s windpipe just enough to give the man a reason to obey.

“Y-yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux said, unable to keep the waver out of his voice as he glared. “The  _ Finalizer _ boasts over one thousand five hundred standard turbolasers. She holds over a thousand ion cannons, including a dozen mega-ion cannons capable of crippling a capital ship with one shot. She has eight heavy turrets on her dorsal section surrounding the command deck and two triple-barreled heavy cannons fit to bear. Three tractor beam projectors give us the force to capture any vessel we wish.”

“What sort of range are we looking at?” Kylo prompted.

Hux allowed pride to enter his voice. “Sir, this ship’s targeting computer has the capability to slice the wing off of a TIE fighter at three million kilometers. I can personally vouch for its accuracy in space.”

Kylo nodded. “Very good.” He pointed to the weapons station. “Stand down,” he ordered.

The weapons officer looked confused but got up and allowed his post to be taken. Kylo gestured for Kuruk Ren to take the weapons chair for himself.

“There is a target the size of a standard datapad at 5 million kilometers,” Kylo said. “It’s equipped with a sensor transceiver transmitting on the 57.6 megahertz band.” He gestured to the sensor crew who leapt into a flurry of action. They pinpointed the tiny dot of signal against innumerable stars and brought the image up on several displays.

“What are you doing?” Hux demanded.

“This is a weapons test,” Kylo said, as though that explained it all. “Tell me, General, is the  _ Finalizer’s _ pitiful range a fault of the targeting computer or a fault of the weapons crew?”

Hux sputtered. “We have the best crew and equipment in the galaxy,” he insisted. “No other ship in the First Order can compete with our performance!”

Kylo stared at Hux with his blank helmet, allowing the lack of expression to unnerve Hux. Then he turned to Kuruk. “You have one shot,” Kylo warned.

Kuruk nodded then flicked a switch on his helm, drowning out extraneous sounds. The blinders of his helm blocked out all unnecessary visual stimuli, including the blinking lights of the confused targeting computer.

Kuruk took a breath to center himself before reaching up. First the targeting computer went down, then the nav computer. The bridge dropped to an eerie silence as the lights went down. Red emergency lights lit the bridge, overpowering the sensor displays that still showed a tiny dot of signal in the distance.

One at a time the turrets on the  _ Finalizer _ went active then inactive as though each one was being tested. The sudden drift of the unguided ship didn’t help matters. Or did it? The  _ Finalizer _ seemed to lazily turn toward its tiny tiny target as one of the heavy cannons came to life.

“I have it,” Kuruk announced.

“Fire!” Kylo bellowed.

The heavy cannon unleashed a devastating bolt of energy into the blackness of the void. Five million kilometers away a tiny datapad disintegrated under enough force to burrow through a moon. It seemed like such overkill.

Then the sensor crew began to holler. “Target destroyed!” they crowed. Most of the bridge cheered as though it were their own victory.

The Knights of Ren crowded Kuruk where he slumped bonelessly against the weapons console. Kuruk reached up to reactivate the targeting and nav computers. The bridge again filled with bright white light.

Hux shielded his eyes. “I’m sure you had a good reason for all of this nonsense,” he snapped.

“Clearly the limitations of the  _ Finalizer’s _ systems are not in the skill of the crew,” Kylo said, as though that explained why he had to use the flagship’s main guns to dispose of a datapad. He turned and left, his Knights following.

“You read the thing before blowing it up, right?” Cardo asked.

“I did,” Kylo admitted. “I shouldn’t have.” The professor’s formal proposal had filled him with a dread he had yet to shake.

Something definitely wasn’t right here.

*****

Dread or no, the professor was true to his word. The professor’s first transmission had been a simple ‘I’ve arrived’ while the second and third were much more useful. The datapad in his hand contained a copy of the recordings sent by Professor Beaumont, bounced off of a complex network of academic comm buoys to a drop point that auto-downloaded into his TIE Whisper. The professor clearly had experience with intelligence networks, or perhaps the academic spheres were more cutthroat than any outsider might realize.

These were scans of two Jedi texts in their entirety. Overlaying the individual scanned pages were the professor's translations and his notes as they pertained to each translation.

Lightsabre combat forms, arguments on philosophy, the Chain Worlds Theorem, creation myths, the legend of Lost Tython, Jedi and Sith holocrons, these books contained all the lessons Luke taught him so long ago. These books contained all the explanations Luke light-washed, watered down, and even lied about in an attempt to uphold his fantasy of an unbalanced light-side-only Force. Given the disbelieving notes scrawled in the margins by Luke’s own hand, these books contained more than Luke could bring himself to believe.

The Prime Jedi, for instance.

The Prime Jedi was a being of Balance, light and dark in equal measures. But some of the words were vandalized away over the millennia, erased and scratched out by angry disbelieving hands. Notes made by a dozen different hands in a dozen different inks all denounced the Prime Jedi as an ideal, as a pretty legend, as slander. No founder of the Jedi would be balanced between light and dark, serenity and passion, male and female.

Wait.

An argument spanned ages in the margins here. Comparing the Prime Jedi to the Father, dismissing them all as fantasy, arguing for and against the existence of Ahch-To, dismissing the ban on mixed-gendered children as pointlessly cruel, and then the final note. ‘The Father was a lie, he died by Vader’s hand and the Force hasn’t fallen yet’.

The final note was written in Luke’s hand.

*****

Kylo found what he was looking for in the professor’s catalog. Ten holocrons likely to have been built by Vader’s own hand. Kylo trailed his hand along the shelf holding them all, each carefully sorted by year of likely construction. The shapes hummed at him, all full of so much energy, each waiting only for the chance to be opened and heard.

He picked up the simplest one at the end of the shelf. A blank cube, only the smallest indent in the center of each face. A Jedi holocron, something a padawan might have made as a project to please his master. It seemed unlikely this would contain what he sought.

Still, he tucked it beneath his cloak and left the catalog otherwise undisturbed. He brought it back to his quarters, placing it before the charred skull of its former owner.

He then realized he wasn’t alone.

“I’m disturbing you,” Inara said. “But the kitchens insist I bring you something to eat.”

Kylo looked at Inara. As his kitchen servant she was supposed to wear a simple tunic and pants. Regulation boots. Hair kept short or tied back and out of the way. She was supposed to look like any other member of the crew.

Why was she dressed in black and red silks? A chain hung low on her bare belly, the navel holding a delicate red jewel. Her breasts were unbanded, barely covered by a twist of silks. Her arms were draped rather than covered, one pull of the tie and the sleeves would unravel to fall away baring her skin for… Wait…

“It appears someone assumed,” Inara said, looking demure. She glanced back up at him through thickly painted lashes.

“Someone assumed I’m keeping you as a pleasure slave,” Kylo realized.

Inara nodded and reached up to grasp the tie of a sleeve and gently pulled. The knot began to unravel.

“I have no need of those services,” Kylo said. She nodded and stopped pulling the tie, instead reached up to retighten it. “Does it bother you?” he asked.

“I…” Inara didn’t know what to say. She tried again. “I’m stared at but no man would dare touch me like this. They fear your anger. That fear is… powerful. Even if it’s not meant for me.”

Kylo chuckled. “Fear is a powerful passion,” he agreed. He allowed her to place what the kitchens sent up before him, shaved meats with spiced bean paste and flatbreads. He absently folded a flatbread to dredge it through the bean paste while considering the holocron.

Holocrons required a Force user to open. Such a user had to channel the Force through the holocron in order to open it. It was a way of safeguarding secrets. But there was more to it than that.

Jedi and Sith holocrons were discerning. A Sith holocron opened for no Jedi, only opening when a practitioner of the dark side channeled enough power into it. But this was a Jedi holocron. Surely that meant…

Kylo put a hand on the holocron and considered something Revan had said. ‘They will trade light and dark like veils.’ He’d felt it before, in the Throne Room of the  _ Supremacy _ after killing Snoke. She stole his darkness from him, like stealing a veil. Perhaps he could steal her veil of light.

Kylo took a bite from his lunch then put the flatbread down. Inara reached for the plate but he defended it with a growl. “Not yet,” he warned. “I need to try something first.”

“Like what?” she asked, sitting down on a spare chair.

“I need to steal a veil.”

Kylo Ren closed his eyes and reached for the wellspring of his bond with Rey. It bubbled quiet for once, burbling like a tiny spring that flowed back and forth, tiny trickles of sensation that lurked beyond the edge of consciousness. He dipped his hand in the waters of that spring. The bond remained undisturbed. No walls sprang up on her end, no rising flood came to entrap him. She drifted near and far on her end, not noticing his presence so close.

Close enough to touch if she tried.

Close enough to hear.

“General, I can’t do this alone,” Rey said. “He was your brother, he trained you as a Jedi! I don’t know what I’m doing!”

The general turned to face Rey and Kylo had to hold back the gasp. His mother. “Rey,” she said, an admonishment, a scold, a word of fondness, Leia had that talent. So many meanings behind a single word, often all at the same time.

“Poe and Finn and the others, they all look at me like I’m some sort of savior. Like I can be what Luke was. What he ran away from. I can’t! Leia, I can’t do it! They want me to save them all and I… I don’t know how.” She looked down, unable to face Leia’s enigmatic gaze.

Leia stepped forward and touched Rey’s face. Kylo gasped, feeling the touch himself. “Rey, you’re already beyond where I let Luke take me,” she said fondly. “I can’t give you the answers you want.”

Rey choked back tears of frustration, the same tears Kylo bit back as he felt his mother’s touch leave his face. Leia pulled away from them and turned away, a silent command to leave her tent.

Rey huffed and left. Poe called out to her but she ignored him. Finn shouted her name but she ran right past him, gaining speed as she ran past the perimeter line into the forest beyond.

Kylo ran after her, his own footfalls silent as she tore through the underbrush with tears streaming from her face. Her voice caught in her throat as her veil of light slipped precariously.

He felt her instinctively reach for his passions as she found a clearing and fell to her knees to scream her frustrations to the sky.

Kylo Ren tore open the bond and let light and dark invert as Rey unleashed her fury on the unwary planet.

On the  _ Finalizer _ Ben Solo opened his eyes with a start. He shuddered, his arms wrapped around himself.

“Supreme Leader, are you all right?” Inara asked. “You were crying.”

He wasn’t fine. Ben Solo was far from fine. He felt like he’d found the other half of himself only to have it all ripped away. Like tendrils of Force dragged from his broken soul, each tendril desperate to latch onto anything that might feed it: the dark side, the First Order, his dead Master Snoke, his dead Master Skywalker, his dead grandfather’s disembodied voice, so many minor obsessions he’d always cultivated in secret. So much death.

Ben doubled over from the agony of it all. He longed to reach back through the bond for his old veil but that wasn’t the one in his hands. Dispassionate denial, serene delusion, comfortable obscurity, is this what Rey cloaked herself in? Despite friends, despite the Resistance, despite the power of the Jedi, she was still a lonely scavenger from Jakku, content with her desperate lot in life. 

Ben took her veil, took Rey’s light, and cloaked himself in it. He relaxed as the pain faded, as his own Force found something to become. He took deep breaths, letting go of his pain, his hate, his rage. She needed it right now and he had no use for it as his passions fell away to drain through the well that she drank deeply of on the other side.

Ben raised his hands to the holocron and it opened.

He stared as the hologram took the form of… himself.

No, not quite. It was a man in Jedi robes. But the man’s face. He looked so young, long shaggy brown hair grown wild like his own. The man had Ben’s intense eyes, Ben’s soft lips, Ben’s long thin frame. Ben glanced at the burned skull, the empty shell where his grandfather once resided. This… was Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin spoke and his voice was nothing like Ben had ever heard. It was the voice of a padawan.

“Master Obi-Wan insisted I make this recording,” Anakin said. “He insisted I make this recording and then keep it secret. He believes what we found might be misunderstood by the Jedi Council. Given what Master Obi-Wan has revealed of his own motives, I agree with him.”

“I was tempted,” Anakin continued. “I was tempted by those who claimed to be gods. We followed our intel to an uncharted world strong in the Force. This world was more than that, it contained a pocket in the Force where dwelled…

“The Jedi have a legend,” Anakin said, trying to begin again. “The Force personified. The Daughter, representing the light side of the Force. The Son, representing the dark side. Between them, holding them in balance, their dyad Father.

“I’m supposed to be the Chosen One. That’s what everyone says.” Anakin laughed, a nervous broken laugh. “I don’t care what everyone says, if this is what it means I don’t want it. The Father grew weak with thousands of years of whatever life that was, keeping their Daughter and Son from killing each other. And then the Father… offered. The Father offered me… that.”

Ben watched intently as Anakin laughed again, this time in horrified disgust.

“I know what the Jedi do to mixed-gender children,” Anakin whispered. “They’re stolen from their families like all Force sensitives. But while the Force sensitives are trained, the others are… Well… We’re not supposed to know what happens to them. But I do. I know their ends are quick and painless. Merciful. The Jedi wouldn’t have it any other way. I know… I know Master Windu would rather I had been ended that way instead of… instead of the Council allowing me to be trained.

“I still don’t know why the Jedi are terrified of dyads. But Master Obi-Wan wants me to keep this quiet. If the Jedi Council learned the Father offered me their place as a god or that I was tempted? They’d put me down as a dyad myself even… even though I’m… even though Master Obi-Wan says I’m not.”

Ben watched as Anakin’s voice cracked and his head bowed in something like shame?

“I wanted it,” Anakin admitted. “I did. But I couldn’t. After I left them, left the Father, their Children came to me. The Daughter tried to convince me to stay. She said she would make the transformation easy, that I'd enjoy it. But the Son. He didn’t want me like that, as a Father. He wanted me in… another way. And I was tempted again. The dark side is… passionate.” Anakin bowed his head again, this time surreptitiously shifting his robes to hide the evidence of exactly what passions the Son had offered. When he looked up the blush still stained his face. He cleared his throat and continued.

“The Son saw his chance and killed his Sister. The Father took their own life in grief. I knew as they died, I should have… The Jedi are wrong! Not all temptations are meant to be resisted. Some are simply tests. A test I… failed.”

Ben had the oddest urge to reach out and stroke the side of the cubic holocron, the closest he could come to offering any comfort to the conflicted padawan before him.

“But I guess the legends were wrong,” Anakin said. “The Father, the Son, and the Daughter. They’re supposed to be personifications of the Force. The Daughter is dead, the Son is crippled, the Father is dead, and the Force is still strong. Maybe it’ll all be destroyed later, I don’t know. But Master Obi-Wan says there’s whispers of war on the horizon with the Separatists. I don’t know what will happen. But I guess I’ll always have to wonder. What if I caused this? Because I failed?”

The holocron flickered as the recording ended. Ben sat back, only then realizing he had tears streaming down his face. This was his grandfather. This was what began Anakin’s fall to darkness. 

It hurt.

Ben wrapped his arms around his middle as the pain increased. He felt tugging, something below the surface grasping blindly for…

Ben Solo reached out through the bond as Rey reached up for him. Their fingers met, a bolt of power jolting between them through the bond. The stench of sand and loam and death and life and everything and--

Kylo Ren came to against the wall where he’d been thrown. Inara held his hand, tapping her fingers against his wrist. He sat up and groaned.

“Supreme Leader, what was that?” she asked. “You meditated then opened the holocron. It made you cry and when it finished some terrible force threw you against the wall!”

Kylo extracted his hand from hers and stood up. The room swam for a moment until he willed it to stop. “That was a secret for you to keep,” he said. “No one is to know. About any of it.”

“Of course, Supreme Leader.”

Kylo gestured toward the forgotten plates. “Eat whatever. I’ll be in the fresher. For a long time.” He left her there as he began to strip his clothing, leaving it in a trail to the fresher. For the moment he needed to wash the feel of phantom sand and his mother’s loving hand from his skin. 


	8. Challenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, a rating change. And a pairing added. No I'm not turning Kylo Ren into a pining prince(ss), I got things to do, plots to advance, Knights to toy with.

The First Order ran well enough on momentum alone.

Kylo Ren allowed his generals to handle their own affairs, like individual warloards reliant on a central infrastructure. It meant he didn’t have to micromanage each Star Destroyer, he didn’t have to directly command each ground team, he didn’t have to order every rebellion put down. His generals knew what they were doing.

Hunt the Resistance. Destroy every offshoot from the main movement. But the core Resistance itself, that was left for Kylo’s own machinations. Until the Supreme Leader grew tired of playing cat and mouse with the Scavenger Jedi the generals of the First Order would indulge him.

It meant they got to indulge their own ambitions a little longer as well.

*****

Coruscant had a moon once. The thought struck Kylo Ren as important before he tried to wave it away. The thought stuck around, reminding him how Coruscant was the center of the human galaxy, to the point where common wisdom claimed a female’s maternal cycle synced up to Coruscant’s former moon, long since disassembled to build the thriving city below.

If there were any truth to the legend, that meant it would have been five lunar months since he stole Rey’s pain from her. Now the foolish girl had learned to push it off through the bond onto him on her own with no knowledge of what powers she toyed with. Beaumont’s transmissions were less than helpful, the girl seemed unwilling to test the limits of their bond on her own and the professor was unwilling to blow his cover by admitting any knowledge. Leia had even agreed to train Rey, if only to prevent another suspiciously dark outburst in an empty forest. It would not help.

Many things wouldn’t help even if they would make him feel better. For instance, Kylo stalked to the Ren gym looking for someone able to fight back while he took his frustrations out on them. 

He walked into an active competition.

Ap’lek and Vicrul circled one another, weapons at the ready. Both had their full talents turned on the other, Ap’lek twitching with stray visions that Vicrul implanted while Vicrul moved precisely as Ap’lek’s mind commanded. It led to an even match that quickly grew boring to watch. Instead Kylo focused on the one who lorded over the display.

Kris-fer lounged on the benches, Ushar and Trudgen not far from her. Her armor was nowhere to be seen, her weapons still hung on display against the wall, her breasts were visibly unbanded, and her clothes were purposefully loose.

Every Knight who currently followed the Ren knew what this was. She wanted someone to stud her and made them all compete for the privilege.

Normally Kylo Ren would gleefully join the competition, would grab his sword and get his ass handed to him by a horny Trudgen. Not today. Today he made his way to the benches and sprawled out to watch, unable to stop his arms from wrapping around his waist.

He could feel the weight of Kris-fer’s attention. She was staring at him, if staring was even the right word. He didn’t want to think about it. He was in no mood for games today, he needed something more chaotic.

She sat up and leered at him. He ignored her.

“New prize,” she announced.

Ap’lek and Vicrul stopped their circle, both turning their attention to her. Ushar and Trudgen both came out of their bored funks. 

Kris-fer grinned and gestured toward Kylo.

As his Knights turned their delighted, hungry gazes on Kylo he realized exactly what Kris-fer meant. Realization turned to disbelief, then to anger, then to a fury that burned with that same white hot pulse of Rey’s pain as he tore himself off of the benches and called his weapon to him.

How DARE she?!

How dare she offer him up, a trophy to be won by males in mindless rut? How dare she assume he would  **allow** himself to be studded by the winner like a prize mare? How dare she!

How dare she squeal in glee as she jumped off the benches to grab her own weapon?

His Knights scattered as Kylo swung his sword wide in his fury, all of his strength behind the backhanded blow. She jumped from the strike, twisting her spear around to deflect his second swing.

The power of his furious blade went unmatched as she danced around him, her feet barely daring to touch the mat before jumping away again. Each time their weapons touched the strength of his blows swung her weapon wide, the vibration coursing up her arms even as she let him drive her back and around the arena.

She toyed with him and he snarled at her, at the shadows they competed over. He could simply call upon the Force to end this, end her, end all of them. But that would be boring. Instead he charged again, letting Rey’s pain overwhelm him as his hands shifted to her favored two-handed grip.

He knocked Kris-fer’s stab to his belly wide, twisting into her reach and slamming his blade into her arm. She screamed in pain, dropping her spear and falling to the mat to signal his victory.

Kylo breathed deep, willing his rage to cool. He had her at his feet, her arm broken, she would no longer dare to challenge him.

As he came back to himself he realized his Knights all splayed on the benches as though…

As though he and Kris-fer had been the ones competing for them instead. Given their eager grins and how they tried to splay themselves in pleasing ways they knew it, too.

Kylo calmly walked over to the weapons rack and placed his in its place. His Knights still had that eager look, all waiting for his decision.

What decision would that be, then? Rey’s pain coursed through him, the chamory tea’s foulness made him gag at the thought. A hot shower only relaxed away the pain for so long.

He found himself honestly considering it. The Sith were no strangers to indulging their passions; Darth Sidious himself had four consorts, three Hands, and a pair of studs he kept leashed and muzzled for his own personal use. 

Kylo hadn’t allowed himself to be studded since before Starkiller. Too busy. And then Rey...

Kylo tossed all thoughts of Rey aside and made his decision. “Ushar,” he purred. 

Ushar stood up and stretched, almost a display. He was not a small man, broad muscle and scars, his strength augmented by how he chose to use the Force. He grinned before stepping onto the gym mat, grabbing Kylo around the throat, and lifting him off of his feet.

“You know how I like it,” Ushar said, a warning as much as a statement.

Kylo gripped Ushar’s wrist and snarled in challenge. He didn’t want to be coddled or cherished or worshiped, he wanted to fight for this. He wanted to take and be taken, he wanted an excuse to spend this rage on someone who could handle it.

Ushar grinned wide and tossed Kylo over his shoulder, wrapping one arm around Kylo’s waist and another around his legs to keep him from squirming away. That left his hands free, left to claw and grab and pound into Ushar’s back as the large man carried him off to the armory.

Off where no one would hear them. 

The armory was quiet, the forge cold, tools arrayed for later use. Those tools scattered as Ushar stormed in, lifted Kylo off of his shoulder, and slammed the man into the wall. He let go, Kylo landing on his feet. Kylo’s hands went to his tunic to undress, to get out of these clothes, only for Ushar to grab his wrists and slam them against the wall above his head.

“That’s mine,” Ushar rumbled.

Kylo growled, pulling at the hands binding him. He brought up a booted foot to push Ushar away, unable to keep purchase against Ushar’s leg. His boots were too oily.

Oily? Wait--

Ushar grabbed the lid off of a nearby barrel and tossed the lid away. Cold quenching oil oozed thick inside, ready to be used on a blade. Or on a body.

Ushar leaned close to Kylo’s ear, close enough to smell his hair. “You’d better fight me for this,” he rumbled.

Kylo snarled, wrenching one arm free. He punched at Ushar’s shoulders, using only physical strength. 

Ushar growled, it wasn’t enough. “I said fight me,” he warned. “I didn’t come here to stud some soft Alderaanian  _ prince _ !” He punctuated his words by grabbing Kylo by the hair and pulling it, tugging his neck back so Ushar could lick Kylo’s sabre scar in one long stroke from his shoulder up his neck and across his face.

Kylo shuddered and relaxed, moaning as Ushar pulled his hair. The fight in him didn’t leave, it changed, turning languid. He purred at the feel of Ushar’s hot tongue on his skin, letting it happen. He turned hooded eyes on Ushar and struck, hands going for Ushar’s throat.

Ushar hissed his assent at this turn of events. He ripped at Kylo’s tunic, tearing the fabric at the seams as he tugged at ties and pawed at fastenings. Kylo purred as he leaned in close, giving Ushar access to the fastenings in the back even as he put his lips to Ushar’s own ear. It was a shame Ushar’s hair was shorn off, cut close to the skin, it left nothing to grab. “I’ve never been soft,” he warned before sliding Ushar’s shoulder armor off and digging his nails into the defenseless skin beneath.

Ushar groaned at the sharp pain, grinding into Kylo. Kylo kept going, tugging at the fastenings on Ushar’s armor, using the Force to pluck at the buckles that held everything on. He guided Ushar’s own hands to the hidden clasps in his tunics, using the Force to loosen the ties.

“Eager little mare,” Ushar chuckled.

Kylo growled. He wrapped a long leg around Ushar’s waist, grinding against him even as he ran nails sharp like claws down Ushar’s spine. Clothing fell away, discarded on the oily floor. Ushar kicked it all away, out into the darkness of the empty armory. Kylo used the Force to tug his boots off as Ushar lifted him and slammed him against the wall as though trying to get him to stay there. Kylo wrapped bare legs around Ushar’s waist, letting the larger man hold him up even as he bit down on Ushar’s shoulder and growled.

Ushar moaned, using his weight to press Kylo to the wall. “More,” Ushar pleaded.

Kylo licked the bruised skin and bit again further down. He dug his claws into Ushar’s back, dragging red furrows of pain that made Ushar arch and hiss and grind. Kylo rumbled, his mouth too full of skin to call it a growl as he shook his head like a predator trying to tear away a morsel. He drew blood and let go, instead licking the wound with long languid licks.

Ushar groaned, huffing in Kylo’s ear. One hand went to Kylo’s hair, pulling it again. His other hand went for the quenching oil.

Kylo felt a slick fat finger at his hole, intruding, stretching, taking advantage of how thoroughly he relaxed with Ushar’s hand tugging his hair. He was squished between that broad body and the cold wall and he didn’t care, he needed those hands to do something. Pull his hair, move inside him, something. He moaned as one finger became two, slick and warm and large and that hand in his hair pulled again, turning his resolve to keep fighting into a desire to just hold on.

Ushar felt Kylo’s surrender and rumbled. “You know what happens when you stop fighting,” he warned. He licked Kylo’s ear. “I take my time.”

Kylo shuddered as those fingers left him empty.

Ushar dipped his hand in the quenching oil again and slicked up his dick. “I’m going to take my time with you,” Ushar purred. “I am going to stud you until you beg me to stop. And then I’m going to keep going.” He slid his slickened dick against Kylo’s own neglected cock then back to prod Kylo’s hole.

Kylo growled. “Stop teasing,” he whined.

Ushar pressed the head of his dick inside.

Kylo made a sound he refused to admit was a gasp as he was breached. He dug his nails into Ushar’s shoulders, holding on as he slowly sank onto the larger man’s thick length, his breath leaving him in a long slow purr. He tightened his legs around Ushar’s waist and relaxed.

Ushar began to move.

Kylo purred as Ushar began slow, his long fat length sliding in and out, stretching him. Stroking him from the inside. His toes curled as a hand pulled his hair again, keeping him relaxed as Ushar began to thrust with force. He purred, his eyes falling closed as he allowed himself to just feel.

His senses expanded, seeping like oil into every crevice. He felt his own shadowy veil dripping from him like so much tar, fat drops falling into the spring that constantly burbled in the back of his mind. He sensed the veils around him, every Knight of Ren with their unique Force signature. Some like Vicrul were even darker than his own, others like Ushar were surprisingly light.

He sensed they weren’t alone.

“By Chaos what are you doing?!”

Kylo opened his languid eyes to Rey’s scream. His senses came roaring back, the feel of Ushar thrusting into him front and center as his cock dug into Ushar’s belly unable to get the friction he needed. Rey’s projection stood with a hand over her eyes, her face flushed red, seemingly trying to look anywhere but at him. He wondered idly if she could even see Ushar or if she simply saw him looking ridiculous and decided to test it. He licked Ushar’s shoulder and bit down on the crook of his neck.

Ushar’s rhythm faltered as he looked around. He leaned close to Kylo to whisper in his ear. “Your scavenger’s here, isn’t she.” It wasn’t a question.

Kylo gave the tiniest nod.

Ushar growled and pulled his hair back, arcing Kylo’s neck so he could lick the sabre line again. This time there was nothing playful about it, it was a possessive move, a challenge. Ushar dared Rey to fight for Kylo Ren.

Kylo watched her as Ushar’s tongue traced his scar. He felt an image, for a moment saw him as she saw him. She saw that challenge, saw Ushar taking him. She saw everything.

He felt her as she willed the bond closed, losing visual as she managed to cut that part off. But the spring simmered and spat beneath and he could feel her frustration as he indulged his passions while she refused.

“She’s gone,” Kylo purred. For now.

Ushar took the opportunity to grab Kylo’s waist, reseating him. He reached for the quenching oil to reslick before continuing as Kylo whined. He wouldn’t beg, no matter how her frustration tore at his resolve. He tried to reach down to his own cock but Ushar grabbed his wrist and pinned it above his head. 

“Not until you beg,” Ushar promised.

Kylo growled, demanding more than that. He reached down with his remaining hand only to find that one similarly pinned.

“Beg for me,” Ushar tempted.

Kylo whined, twisting in Ushar’s grip. The hand holding his wrists captive was slick with oil, he could try to escape. He twisted his wrists and Ushar’s grip grew tight. Ushar growled. “I said  _ beg _ .”

It all felt too much. Ushar’s relentless thrusting, the press of his large body squeezing him against the wall, fumbling attempts at release on the other side of the bond building in him all wrong in ways he never knew he needed, he couldn’t hold on much longer. He whimpered but did not beg.

That whimper turned to a sob then whine as Ushar changed his angle, as his rhythm stuttered. He was close, too close. “Beg!” Ushar demanded.

Kylo bit down on Ushar’s shoulder and screamed.

Ushar roared as he slammed once into Kylo’s ass and came.

Kylo still writhed, so close. All it would take was a few thrusts. He tugged at his wrists, trying to free one hand. One hand was all he needed.

Ushar kept his grip tight, holding Kylo against the wall with his weight. He reached down and took Kylo’s cock in hand, rubbing it against his belly.

Kylo nearly sobbed with relief as his own orgasm crashed through him, cum spurting over Ushar’s chest and belly, up to his neck.

Ushar pulled out, letting go of Kylo’s wrists. He held Kylo against the wall until it became clear he had no intention of getting his legs below him. Instead Ushar slid him down the wall to the floor while Kylo purred and stretched and gloried in the feel of it all. 

Ushar pulled on his pants, fastening them without even bothering to clean himself. He rubbed cum into his chest while Kylo watched. “I will reek of you,” Ushar purred. “Every stormtrooper I pass, every officer who tries to stop me, every General I annoy, they will smell you on me. They’ll know exactly what we did here and they’ll be forced to think about it, to imagine it. Maybe we’ll all pay a visit to General Hux later. He’s been skittish of late.”

Kylo slid his own hands into his hair and gripped, tugging his own hair as he arched back into the sensation. He could still feel it…

Ushar shook his head. “Darksiders,” he rumbled.

“Lust is the most pleasant passion to indulge in,” Kylo purred, uncaring as he laid on the soot and oil stained floor. “Anyone who says otherwise has forgotten.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ushar said as he picked his clothes off the floor. He left Kylo’s clothes in a pile on a bench. “Don’t stay here too long, I expect Cardo wants his forge back.” He left.

Kylo stretched. Force, he reeked of oil and the forge and sex. At least they were familiar smells, nothing unpleasant. Nothing like the pain that throbbed like a distant memory, Rey’s pain indeed calmed by the act of getting himself a stud. A very thorough stud. He idly stroked himself, remembering the feel of it all, the heat and the stretch and the taste of blood.

“Oh Force, you’re still at it.”

Kylo opened one eye. Rey looked flustered and resigned. Also angry. He knew that anger, he just couldn’t reach it. He didn’t want to, too content right now to try. Still he sat up, knowing he looked as much a mess as he felt, streaked with oil and sweat and grime. “Did I ask you to come?” he said, voice carefully neutral.

“As if I control this!” Rey snapped.

“You control more than you realize,” Kylo said. He got to his feet, not bothering to hide his nakedness.

“Cover yourself,” Rey commanded, throwing a towel at him.

Kylo grabbed the towel. It was nothing he recognized, it must be something from the Resistance base. It was stiff, like it had been washed in a river and hung to dry in the wind. He rubbed himself with it, trying to remove at least some of the cum and oil before it dried sticky under his clothes. He had a meeting later today and not enough time to detour to the refresher for a shower.

Oh… That’s what Ushar meant when… He chuckled as he imagined the distasteful look on Hux’s sour face when he smelled them both.

“What’s so funny?” Rey demanded.

Kylo threw the towel back at her. She caught it then dropped it with a disgusted squeal when she realized what the fabric had just been touching.

“You’re horrible,” she scolded.

“I’m horrible?” Kylo asked as he found his clothes. “You show up when I’m in the middle of something private and I’m the horrible one? What, am I supposed to drop everything I’m doing, pull my lightsabre, and challenge you right there? Give you my undivided attention? Be the evil Supreme Leader so you can easily hate me and move on with your life?”

“You said Snoke was just taking credit for this bond,” Rey said, abruptly changing the subject. She turned away from Kylo, her hands over her eyes as though he cared about his privacy. 

“Of course he was,” Kylo said almost conversationally. He pulled on his pants, at least those survived intact. And they were black, the better to hide the fact that they’d been discarded and crumpled on the floor of a filthy forge. He stood up, calling his belt to him and fastening that around his waist. “We used it against him. You know this as well as I. It’s continued, evolved. You can feel it.”

“I feel nothing of the sort,” Rey lied.

“You don’t believe that,” Kylo said. He took advantage of her enforced distraction to walk up behind her, close enough to touch. He leaned down to her ear, his hands just over her shoulders. “If you didn’t have control over this bond I wouldn’t need a stud,” he whispered.

She spun in shock at how close he’d gotten, her confusion written plain on her face. “You’re saying I caused this?” she demanded. She gestured to the wall where she’d seen far too much. “I caused that!? Oh no, no no no, that was all you, you filthy Sith bas--”

Kylo struck, one hand grabbing her arm and another grabbing for her hair. He grabbed an entire bun in his hand, pulling it. She gave a cry of shock as he yanked her head back. He was close enough for her to smell, to taste the scent of sex on his skin. “You drove me to need a stud,” he purred. “But I chose which one and how. At least I still have that much. Same as you still control what and how you destroy when my darkness consumes you.”

Her eyes went wide.

“I can teach you how to control it,” Kylo promised. “Your power, your darkness, this bond. I can teach you. Before you destroy us both with your fumbling.”

He let her go and the connection faded. The forge was empty once again. Kylo held a single ribbon in his hand, long and black, like something his mother would have used. He pocketed it and continued getting dressed.

He had a meeting to attend and a General to disturb.

*****

Kylo Ren and his Knights of Ren strode into the conference room on the  _ Finalizer _ like they owned the place. The Knights took places on the periphery, standing in quiet intimidation. Their masks hid any expression, any trace of humanity. Any trace of the quiet smirks, the grinning pride, the silent giggling as General Hux smelled the distinct miasma of male sex wafting up from the large one daring to stand closest to him. Hux looked like he wanted to say something but stopped, horrified nausea dawning on his face as he caught the distinct disarray of the Supreme Leader and his matching smell.

Kylo allowed himself to shift distinctly in his clothing, purring as he felt the remaining twinges of the day’s pleasures. He glanced at Hux, daring the man to say a word.

General Hux swallowed thickly and stared straight ahead, valiantly ignoring it all even as the rage wafted off of him in waves.

Kylo stood at the head of the table, wiped a stray streak of grime from his face, and called for the conference to begin. Holograms flickered to life as the other Capital Ships connected to the  _ Steadfast _ and to each other, all members of the Supreme Council phoning in their presence.

“Supreme Leader, we have received a message.” Allegiant General Pryde began the meeting. “I feel it is of utmost importance, surpassing the Resistance in scope and scale.”

“What is it?” Kylo asked.

“Allow me to play the transmission for us all,” Pryde said. Kylo nodded his assent.

An eerie voice filled the conference room of this and of every Star Destroyer in the First Order fleet.

_ At last the work of generations is complete  
_ _ The great error is corrected  
_ __ The day of victory is as hand  
_ The day of revenge  
_ __ The day of the Sith

That eerie voice cackled in laughter, laughter that sounded like it should collapse into the coughing of a dying old man. But it didn’t. Somehow that voice kept going, fading as though outlasting the transmission itself.

Kylo knew that voice.

They all knew that voice. Some from live holovids, some from history vids, some from parents trying to scare their children into being good lest the evil Emperor come for their souls. 

Palpatine.

“Is this genuine?” General Parnadee asked.

“It can’t be, the Emperor is dead,” Hux dismissed.

“The Force is the pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural,” Kylo warned. “The galaxy at large never knew Emperor Palpatine was a Sith Lord, Darth Sidious. I have acquired many of the former Emperor’s old holocrons and I can assure you, death has not always been a barrier to the Sith. We should take this seriously.”

“And if it’s not?” Parnadee asked. “Serious, I mean.”

“The rest of the galaxy  **will** take it seriously,” Kylo warned. “We can’t afford not to. Has this transmission been traced?  **Can** it be traced?”

“We have a general trace to the Unknown Regions,” Pryde said. “I can get you a general location but the galaxy is vast. The region is still largely unexplored and exceedingly dangerous.”

Kylo glanced at Kuruk who nodded. If need be he could send his Knights to find where this signal came from. But Kylo had a feeling that wasn’t what he should do.

Then he realized. He needed to talk to Beaumont. The professor once mentioned a map…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found the Emperor's message to the galaxy on youtube [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqWN3Orb9Q)


	9. Palpatine

The professor’s latest transmission was a frantic mess. Palpatine’s transmission had been heard across the entire galaxy, flooding the holonet with panic. Sith conspiracy theorists fell out of the woodwork, each producing their own vids and transmitting them to anyone who might listen. The remains of the New Republic called for order, drowned out by their infighting and inability to agree on a course of action. A distinct minority called for Princess Leia to protect them, surely the brave daughter of Darth Vader could stand against the evil Emperor Palpatine, or would she stand with him instead?

The First Order responded with propaganda, introducing the galaxy to the new Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and his loyal Knights of Ren. Kylo’s cloaked and helmed visage invoked some comfort in the galaxy. At least it gave the conspiracy theorists something else to focus on as they argued over whether Kylo Ren, masked and helmed and cloaked and robed, was male or female under all that blank androgynous fabric.

Revan had a point. There was an odd power in keeping people unsure over even the most basic of facts.

Kylo Ren sat down in the pilot seat of his own TIE Whisper, bringing its communications systems to life. The back of the Whisper lay open, its loading hatch splayed on the floor of the hangar bay. His Knights clustered around and half-within the TIE, fiddling with dials and scowling at technicians and in general making a nuisance of themselves.

It was, unfortunately, the only way to get a secure channel to the professor.

The comm opened, voice contact only. “Professor,” he greeted.

“My patron,” Beaumont said.

Kylo could hear the man’s pointless bow from here and rolled his eyes. “What news do you have for me?” he asked.

“We’re a mess over here,” Beaumont said. “I’ve been tasked to act as a sort of spymaster, I have agents trawling holonet vids for anything of interest. There’s talk on the ‘net that Palpatine’s transmission was traced to the Unknown Regions.”

“I am aware,” Kylo said dryly. “That was our trace.”

“Oh. Of course it would be. Makes sense.”

“Do you have anything I wouldn’t already know?”

“General Organa has gone quiet,” Beaumont said. “She’s isolated herself from Rey. Rey’s been spending her time alone in the forest, meditating and training. She came through here on a tear yesterday, pawing through the books like they weren’t priceless relics. I had to beat her off with a stick. She found what she was looking for in one of the scans, something about a map?”

“That’s something I needed to talk to you about,” Kylo said. “You mentioned one of the holocrons was a map.”

“Oh, that, that’s a Sith wayfinder,” Beaumont said dismissively. “There’s maps in there going to all over the galaxy, from the Maw to the Deep Core to Moraband to places I couldn’t even begin to describe. There was more but I’m no Force-user, I could only access the basic information.”

“A holocron that opened for someone without a shadow?” Ap’lek asked.

Kylo realized Ap’lek had climbed into the cockpit of his Whisper and shoved him back behind the chair.

“What are you doing in here?”

Kylo went still as he heard the extra voice beyond Beaumont. He heard the professor begin to stammer out something incoherent.

Ap’lek leaned back over Kylo’s chair and spoke into the comm. “We’re his patrons,” he said.

“Hello? Who is this?”

Kylo stayed silent. He recognized this voice and had the distinct urge to reach across the thousands of parsecs to throttle the traitor for interfering.

Kris’fer squirmed her way into the cockpit, trapping Kylo in his chair with a stray arm. “We’re his patrons,” she replied, sounding far too cheerful.

“I heard that, who _are_ you?” FN-2187 demanded.

“I’m Kris, this is Lector, Victor is over there.” Kris’fer lied through her teeth, the story coming easily to her. “We’re private collectors.”

“Collectors of what?” FN asked.

“We hired the professor after he left the University,” Ap’lek said easily. “I’m sure he told you about his time at the Lerct Historical Institute. He made assistant professor before politics got in the way of his advancement. Which makes sense, he’s a specialist in Sith history. After the First Order took over I expect things got a little iffy for someone of his specialty.”

“You’d be amazed what scavengers pick up nowadays,” Kris-fer said conversationally. “The Empire left things scattered about all over. I mean, what we found on Tatooine alone! The Hutts collected artifacts for  **years** and it was all there for the taking.”

The other side of the comm went quiet. Kylo could imagine the disturbed glare FN must have leveled at the professor at that moment.

“Suddenly the ability to read High Sith was seen as a danger, not a skill,” Beaumont said. “When the Institute found out they, ah, well, I’m on an enforced sabbatical until I can find a more ‘acceptable’ field of study.”

“You read Sith.” FN had not phrased that as a question.

“And it’s a good thing I do,” Beaumont said. “Rey’s books are written in an archaic form of Jedi that closely matches High Sith in structure and vocabulary. Why, there’s almost no correlation between Republic Era Jedi and the archaic forms that--”

“Okay fine,” FN snapped. “Just… don’t tell them anything important. I need to talk to General Organa.”

The comm went quiet though not dead. Then Beaumont came back on the line. “He’s gone.”

Kylo focused on Ap’lek, implanting a thought into his Knight’s open mind. “Don’t assume,” Ap’lek said. He realized and scowled at Kylo who merely shushed him.

“I see, my patrons,” Beaumont said. “I’ll keep you informed.”

The comm went dead. Ap’lek hit Kylo for daring to usurp his voice like that. Kylo brushed off the violence and kicked his Knights out of the Whisper. He had a Wayfinder to examine.

*****

Kylo sat at his desk, one holocron before him and the Wayfinder in his hands. The crystal spire awoke, Revan’s blank visage standing over the crystal’s peak. Revan looked around the room, the white walls clear and blank, the display of Vader’s helm undisturbed, the space devoid of life.

“Your professor is occupied elsewhere?” Revan asked.

“I have him spying on the Resistance,” Kylo said absently. “He wanted to observe both halves of this dyad bond.” He paused then looked up at Revan.

“We are alone,” Revan said, stating the obvious.

“Yes…” Kylo said carefully. He didn’t remember activating Revan’s holocron.

“Something troubles you, Acolyte,” Revan said with an unnerving purr.

Kylo slowly put the Wayfinder on the table. The simple pyramid looked dull and lifeless next to the glowing crystal and blood red stone of Revan’s own. “What are you?” he asked.

Revan chuckled and the hologram shifted then faded. The crystal still glowed even as Kylo felt a presence behind him, as glowing fingers wrapped around Kylo’s shoulders and a helmed head leaned down to his ear. “I am Revan.”

Kylo held his calm, refusing to jump to his feet to escape a hologram, a Force ghost, whatever this was. “Are you now?” he asked instead.

“I was, am, and will always be Revan.” Revan trailed fingers along Kylo’s shoulders before sauntering into Kylo’s field of view.

Kylo grasped for the crystal holocron and willed it to turn off. Nothing happened. Worse, Revan didn’t seem to care, instead seemed to be waiting for Kylo to realize how pointless this action really was. Kylo growled and stood, his hand grasping for a weapon that he didn’t have ready.

“Oh, you are correct,” Revan said conversationally. “I am the holocron. I must say, you have been the most refreshing Acolyte I’ve ever had the privilege to speak to. Not even Bane was so open with himself. Through no fault of your own, of course.”

“Of course,” Kylo repeated, stepping away from the desk. His lightsabre was in the other room. He could slice the holocron in half, rupture its insides, spill its power across the floor to burn to obscurity. All he had to do was get to it.

Revan seemed to sense his plans. “You could destroy me,” he allowed. “But where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m not interested in fun.”

“No?” Revan seemed disappointed. “Well I am.” Revan raised both hands and Kylo found himself back in his chair as though nothing had happened. He looked down and Revan’s holocron sat quiet and dark. There was no trace of the wayward hologram.

Kylo bolted into the other room and grabbed his sabre. He ignited the blade, listened to it sputter and hum in the enclosed space, then turned it off. He hooked the sabre to his belt and went back to the desk.

Something wasn’t right here. He should just stab the crystal thing and be done with it. But a morbid curiosity held him back. Had that really happened? He’d  _ felt _ the drag on Revan’s hand across his shoulders but…

Kylo reached out to the crystal holocron and focused in the Force, willing it open. The crystal responded, the holocron opening. Revan stood above the spire as though nothing had happened, arms folded and spine straight like they were nothing more than a mechanical recording, a droid in disguise.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

The hologram relaxed, taking on a more life-like form. Then it shifted again.

Kylo stood and ignited his sabre, the spitting blade gently hissing where sparks danced along the edge of the holocron. When he turned to face Revan the hologram reacted with fear.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Kylo demanded.

“Because then you’ll never know,” Revan said quickly. “Because then you’ll never know if this was my doing or if it was your own weakness or even if there’s a way to stop it. You’ll never know if everything was a lie or a truth you never wanted or even if you’ve ever been alone in your own mind. Because I know, young Acolyte. I know because you will know.”

Kylo pulled the blade away from the holocron before extinguishing it. “Tell me then.”

Revan visibly breathed a sigh of relief. The hologram sharpened, growing clearer to look at. The details of their filigreed armor shone with all their Sith alchemy. The knots of fabric around their waist clarified, the platinum circle in the middle gleaming with strange conflicting patterns. Kylo kept his eyes on Revan’s helm and the hood draped in a distinctly feminine way.

Revan approached, sauntering the few steps needed to press against Kylo’s chest. Kylo swallowed, Revan was nearly as tall as he was. There wasn’t a single hint of eye in the blackness of the helm’s eye slit.

Kriff, he could  _ feel _ a gloved hand sliding against his cheek, cold metal and soft smooth leather.

“It’s you,” Revan purred. “This is all your doing.”

Kylo didn’t believe that for a second.

“You were ripped apart,” Revan continued, leaning close to speak in Kylo’s ear. “You and her, torn down the middle. Tendrils of desperate energy constantly groping in the Void, seeking out your other half. Desperate enough to latch onto anything that might feed it, that might stop your soul from bleeding out into the Force.”

“I’ve latched onto your holocron,” Kylo said, his voice kept carefully neutral.

“You have latched onto a great many things,” Revan agreed. “People. Artifacts. Disembodied voices. Those who would have used you. Those who did use you. Those who still do…”

Kylo pulled himself from Revan’s grasp, fury rising in him.

“You hear them less now, don’t you,” Revan accused. “Ever since finding the girl. Ever since stealing her pain. Trading veils. Touching her. The more you connect with her the more you latch onto her. The more she latches onto you. This is what a dyad **is** , Acolyte. Once you’ve let go of everything else, once she’s the only one you touch, you’ll never be able to let go. Either of you.”

Kylo wasn’t sure he wanted that.

“Do you instead want to be pulled in a thousand different directions by disembodied voices for eternity?” Revan demanded.

Kylo didn’t want that either. He… he began to suspect…

“How do you know I’ve heard the voices?” he asked.

“The same way I can speak to you like this,” Revan said. Revan stepped close again, one hand gripping Kylo’s shoulder and the other tangling in his hair. Revan clenched their hand, pulling Kylo’s hair tight, pulling his head back to expose the neck. “The same as I knew to do this.”

Kylo snarled and swung at the hologram, his fist somehow both contacting filigreed metal and phasing through Revan’s head. Revan let go and stepped back, silent fury falling off in waves.

“Darth Sidious troubles you,” Revan taunted. “Your mind cries in terror at the idea of him. Your grandfather killed him, tossed him down a shaft into an active reactor core on an exploding space station, and somehow he returns. Worse, he’s a threat to your power. You killed the last Jedi, now you have to kill the last Sith. Again.”

“And then I’ll kill you,” Kylo growled.

Revan laughed. “I’ve been dead for millennia. ‘Let the past die’, I believe you said. Jedi and Sith. All of it. Kill it all like a true dyad. Start over, just as the Force demands.” Revan stepped closer to the desk where the crystal holocron glowed brightly. “It’s easier to give in, isn’t it? Allow the Force to take what it wants. Give in and let it work through you.”

Revan faded away and the holocron sputtered, its simple hologram returning to its usual place. “Eventually you’ll admit it, you want this.”

“What I  **want** is my life back!” Kylo snapped.

“I know, Acolyte. We both know how you’ll get it.”

Revan’s holocron went blank, the light fading. Kylo screamed bloody murder.

Forget working off this anger. He grabbed the Wayfinder and stormed off to the hangar bay. He wasn’t waiting another moment. Let his generals worry about containing the fallout, he would hunt Palpatine on his own.


	10. Exegol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Exegol system is based heavily off of a Hubble Public Lecture I heard once about a white dwarf star ripping apart its own former planets.

A single TIE Whisper dropped from the belly of the  _ Finalizer _ . Refueled, rebuilt, repaired, it lazily turned as the  _ Finalizer _ took off under General Hux’s pointlessly eager dramatics. Kylo Ren watched his command ship jump to hyperspace, leaving him alone and adrift in empty space.

He had something he needed to do. His technicians had assured him he could plug these cables into ports in the holocron to extract the data. Of course the holocron didn’t have ‘ports’. Rather the technicians responded by fitting tiny suction cups to the ends of the cables as though that changed anything.

On the other hand, the Force worked in strange ways. This was not the strangest method of opening a holocron he’d used. He closed his eyes and focused his mind, letting the Force channel through him into the holocron.

He gasped as a flood of images entered his mind. The entire galaxy lay before him, images overlaid on images in a cascade. For one terrible moment he knew the pathways through the Deep Core, saw the barrier that surrounded the galaxy, trod the way to Ahch-To, flew over the jungles of Vis at the center of the Maw, and stood at the threshold of empty Mortis.

He let go. The holocron fell into his lap and bounced to the floor of the Whisper.

Kylo Ren doubled over and groaned. His head throbbed with information, too many Paths in the Force, this wasn’t just a map to Moraband or Tython, this was a map to  **everything** . Every place in the galaxy the Sith ever found important, either by deed or by history, was here in this holocron.

A holocron full of maps indeed. No wonder it opened to a professor with no connection to the Force, it didn’t  _ need _ a connection. It  _ made _ those connections.

Kylo Ren reached down blindly under his seat. He felt the holocron’s smooth edges and let the Force nudge it into his hand. He pulled it up.

What had Vader been doing with this? Why hadn’t he used it?

Worse, what if he had?

Kylo placed the cables with their suction cups against the glass sides of the holocron and watched with dull acceptance as the device took control over his navigational computer. Of course. He closed his eyes and let the holocron make its calculations.

Behind his eyes an image of the galaxy spread before him. His own position in it flashed like a little red dot. More dots appeared, places the holocron had been used to find. The Maw was littered with dots, dots he knew represented some of the more horrible prisons run by the Empire. The dots in the Deep Core felt just as young and equally dangerous. Older dots clustered around a hole in the hyperspace barrier around the galaxy.

One ancient dot flashed in the Unknown Regions where the First Order had found and violated Ilum.

Dots flashed in the Unknown Regions where as far as he knew the First Order had never ventured.

“What’s this?” he said to himself.

Nobody answered. Good. He giggled, unsure if he could have handled himself if someone had answered.

He opened his eyes. The image of the galaxy still dominated his vision, overlaying everything else. He looked past it, brushing away star clusters and empty planets to bring up an image from his addled nav computer. The signal trace from Palpatine’s transmission flashed on a screen before the image of the galaxy subsumed it. The holocron absorbed the data, focusing on an ancient dot in the Unknown Regions.

The holocron labeled it ‘Exegol’.

“Take me there,” Kylo said.

He shook his head when his Whisper didn’t respond. Of course it didn’t. Instead he programmed in the offered coordinates, following the instructions of the holocron as it flew his Whisper for him. As the hyperdrive engaged, flinging him into the swirling bright blues only found past light speed.

*****

From here Exegol’s system was beautiful.

Kylo Ren had made the mistake of coming out of hyperspace early. That mistake brought Exegol’s true visage to his eyes and he beheld the beautiful bloated corpses before him.

A vast planetary nebula sparkled all around him, its diffuse arcs and bands shifting with all the colors of the star’s former elements. As he descended the light began to fade, growing cold and pale as the nebula fell away to reveal the carnage within.

A white dwarf, a corpse star tugged on trapped planets, dragging each to their doom. A disk of debris around the star bespoke of previous planets all ripped apart as they fell within the star’s Roche limit. Flashes of light and deadly radiation warned of impacts against the surface of that star, debris destroyed in heat and flame and the cruel compression of gravity. Debris that slowly fed the undead corpse, bloating it perilously close to utter destruction.

Three planets still circled this star. A gas giant skirted the edges of the nebula, blue as any gemstone, its own rings a spider-fine contrast to the dark disk of death around the star. A dead dark world circled far enough to survive the carnal feeding. But close in…

Exegol circled close to the white dwarf, the next to be ripped apart by the star’s relentless consumption. It pulsed with the dark side, the vergence within its core keeping the world alive. Aurorae glowed across its atmosphere, the bright greens and reds nearly drowned out by the angry blue flashes of light as dust grains clashed and static jumped in great bolts of lightning.

This nightmare world was where the holocron had brought him.

This was where Emperor Palpatine waited to be found.

Kylo Ren gripped the hilt of his lightsabre before allowing the Whisper to drop through the atmosphere as the holocron willed.

Exegol was a dead world. It rumbled with the gravitational stresses of orbiting far too close to the white dwarf. Sensors indicated tunnels and mines honeycombing the solid mantle as past Sith cults dug deep for the vergence within. The dark side itself shielded the planet, collecting a breathable atmosphere despite the star’s radiation trying to burn it all away. That darkness spread, infecting him, making him shudder with barely contained fury, lust, anger, a thousand passions at once bringing him to his knees.

He could feel his eyes turning yellow again.

Kylo Ren shivered with want, though want for what he wasn’t sure.

The temple lay before him. The answers lay within.

*****

Darth Sidious, Emperor Palpatine, the great Sith Lord that destroyed the Jedi Order and ruled the galaxy, was a wreck.

Kylo Ren stood before another corpse. It was a body half rotted, supported by machines, dangling from a great mechanical arm like a toy to tempt a Loth cat. Its fingers snapped off, the bones visible and dead. Its mouth of rotted bone supported a fuzzy bloated tongue and a few blackened teeth. Only the dark side kept this corpse alive, if ‘alive’ was a word that could be used to describe this biomechanical construct. He had the distinct urge to put it out of its misery but refrained from killing it. He doubted it could die, not here, not so steeped in the mindless orgy of dark side life on this blasted nightmare world.

“I was every voice you ever heard,” it mocked. Kylo heard them all, Snoke and Vader, Luke and the Ren, a hundred nameless dark voices from his childhood. Even his own. So much his own.

It promised much. The corpse offered him many things. A sky full of Star Destroyers, the galaxy on its knees, the Throne of the Sith itself. All he had to do was one thing, a little thing, a trifle really.

Kill the girl.

Kill Rey.

“I will,” he lied.

Anything to get out of the corpse’s grasping crumbling claws.

As cultists of the Sith Eternal plied him with delicate fungoid feasts grown from the dark side itself, as they enhanced his helm with blood red Sith Alchemy, as they pawed and purred at him like he were an object of worship summoned by their corpse-god, Kylo Ren had a thought.

There were voices the Emperor hadn’t taken credit for. Voices the Emperor didn’t know about.

Anakin. Rey.  _ Revan _ .

Snoke hadn’t known what this dyad bond was. And neither did the Emperor.

*****

Kylo Ren gave a half-hearted attempt to sell the First Order on the Emperor’s ‘Final Order’. Why the Supreme Council so immediately fell for the empty promises of a living corpse and the illusion of a sky filled with Star Destroyers he had no idea.

Well, maybe he had some idea. The sky full of Star Destroyers may be a Sith illusion but there were perhaps half a dozen real ships among the illusion. A half dozen ships each with a world-destroying axial superlaser mounted to its belly. After Hosnian Prime the mere untested threat of another world destroyer was enough to make the dominant government roll over to bare its belly in submission.

Unfortunately that ‘dominant government’ was the First Order and the belly exposed was Kylo Ren’s own.

It was with these thoughts that his Knights of Ren descended upon him.

At least it didn’t look like they’d descended on him like a pack of vultures. It wasn’t like the time Trudgen and Ushar carried him kicking and screaming to the gym on Starkiller. Nor was it like the time he’d been blindfolded, muzzled, shackled, and leashed, forced to follow Kris-fer around the  _ Night Buzzard _ while the Ren watched and laughed. Instead Ap’lek and Vicrul walked before and behind him, their weapons discretely keeping him imprisoned between them while Kuruk led the way, following a Path that made him appear drunk.

That Path led to one of the cargo bays. Droids were missing or deactivated. Scuffling in the darkness betrayed the presence of vermin, of illicit meetings, or of those simply looking for someplace to hide.

Kylo found himself brought to his Knights here in the light of one single overhead lamp that flickered. He pulled off his alchemy-enhanced helm, his yellow eyes piercing the darkness beyond.

His Knights had their weapons ready.

“Must we do this now?” Kylo asked.

“This isn’t a challenge,” Ushar said, his warclub resting on his shoulders.

“This is an intervention,” Trudgen said. Yet Trudgen still held his warcleaver in both hands, the blade ready to attack or defend.

“You reek of the darkest shadows,” Kris-fer said. “The stench rolls off of you in waves. I can feel the mushrooms in your cloak.” She dared talk to him with her spear level, the blade gently drawing along his side as if to keep him standing in the middle while they circled around him.

“What happened at Exegol?” Kuruk asked. “Forget what we heard you tell the Supreme Council. What really happened.” He and Cardo were the only ones unarmed. Blasters and flamethrowers made for poor weapons in a circle jerk like this.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Ap’lek demanded. His own halberd matched Kris-fer’s spear, the blade of his weapon caressing Kylo’s other side to keep him centered.

Kylo felt the twin blades slide around him, from side to back to side to belly. This felt more real than anything had since letting that holocron take control of his Whisper. “There was no Snoke,” he purred, relaxing into the blade’s ministrations. The weapon of a Knight of Ren was an extension of their physical selves, the blades around his waist moved like hands stroking him. “He never existed.”

Vicrul brought his scythe up, letting the inside curve slide around Kylo’s neck. Kylo leaned his head back, feeling the blunt inner edge against his skin like the hand of a lover, or of a strangler. “The Ren trusted Snoke,” Vicrul said, his voice dangerously level. “The Ren brought you to us on Snoke’s say-so. The Ren wouldn’t have lied to us.”

“The Ren wouldn’t have known,” Kylo said, eyes falling closed. The blades around his waist pressed in, gently scoring fabric. “The Emperor on Exegol had cloning tanks, unused and failed Snokes kept in fluid storage. It was him all along, the Emperor. Darth Sidious.”

Kylo gasped as Vicrul’s scythe pulled tight, bringing him back to awareness. Suddenly it made sense why Snoke’s eyes were so clear and pure and blue. Snoke never fell to the dark side because he never had a shadow in the first place. He was only a conduit to Sidious’s power.

“What else,” Cardo demanded.

“Every voice I’ve ever heard,” Kylo admitted. “Every master I’ve ever had. It was Sidious all along. I’ve had his whispers in my shadow my entire life.”

“Is it even your own?” Vicrul asked, sliding the dull hook of his scythe around Kylo’s neck. “Or are you merely a conduit for the Emperor’s power like Snoke was?”

“Worse,” Kylo said, gasping. “So much worse. The girl and I… Revan’s holocron… Sidious couldn’t replicate Revan’s voice.”

“Speak plain!” Ushar demanded.

“I am half of a dyad,” Kylo said, staring into the blank masks of his Knights. He willed them to believe him. He willed them to know what in Chaos he was talking about. “One person split in half. Two halves locked away in two bodies. Sidious targeted me because I was, I am, only half a person. Half a soul. Half a mind.”

“Half a shadow,” Ap’lek accused.

“And if I’m only half a shadow,” Kylo warned. He let the threat hang empty, unfinished.

“He used you,” Kris-fer realized. “He let you be  _ his _ half a shadow. Used it to shelter himself from the galaxy. He grew under your cloak.”

“And he doesn’t understand,” Kylo said. “He wants me to kill the girl. Kill her to prove myself.”

“Why not do it?” Cardo asked.

Kylo brought his lightsabre up but didn’t ignite it. He didn’t have to, instead he used the hilt to draw a line up and down Cardo’s body where the blade would slice. “You’d die if I bisected you,” he said. “You’d die in searing agony. Same as I die if she dies.”

“Or she if you die,” Kuruk said. He nodded. “That… makes sense. I can see the red threads tying you together.”

“I don’t see threads,” Kris-fer said. “I see black tar. Footprints, desperate bubbles, it clings to you and her as you slide past each other.”

“She has the other half of your shadow,” Ushar realized.

“And if your shadows merge?” Trudgen asked.

“I don’t know where the merge ends,” Kylo admitted. “No one does. Especially not Sidious.” He laughed, the broken laughter of a man near the end of his sane wits. “If Sidious knew he wouldn’t have risked wasting us on simple death. The Je’daii began in a dyad, they will end in one. The last Jedi is already dead. Now all that stands between us is the last Sith. The Force will no longer be denied and…”

Kylo didn’t voice the next part aloud. He didn’t have to.

_...and I don’t want to fight it anymore. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All those failed sanity checks have started adding up. Madness awaits with open arms.


	11. Pasaana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed Kijimi appears to be missing. Why yes I do go AU here by removing the parts of canon I deem too dumb to survive. It's a great scene and a great place but the Plot Device used to get everyone there cannot be allowed to live.
> 
> Instead I have the group use Ochi's ship to get into the _Finalizer_ and the Kijimi Force Bond scene happens with Kylo Ren still on Pasaana. If Hux is the Resistance spy then I will _use_ him as a Resistance spy.

Kylo stalked the corridors of his own ship. His Knights followed him like an honor guard, like a group of enforcers or bodyguards. Or maybe they were waiting for a sign of weakness. It could be any of those, possibly all of them.

He couldn’t even get a moment’s peace to open Revan’s holocron. The last thing he needed right now were his Knights knowing just how open he was, his shadow splayed bare enough for an inanimate object to feed upon. Yet he yearned to converse with one of the few things, the few  _ people _ in his life he knew to be untainted by the Emperor’s clutches.

Still he shivered when he felt the gentle tug on the bond. The sound of children’s laughter drew him to glance around, wondering if they were near the stormtrooper levels. Children always ran around there regardless of their handler’s wishes. But no, rather he caught General Hux lurking nearby. If any man would squash the joy of children it would be him.

“A moment,” Hux insisted.

Kylo waved off the Knights who stood between him and his general. “What is it?” Kylo demanded.

“General Pryde has volunteered as ambassador to the Emperor’s Final Order,” Hux said with a visible sneer.

It made sense. Pryde was an old Imperial, he would remember his allegiance to his old Emperor. “Of course he has,” Kylo said. He thanked his helm for muffling the tired sound of his voice. Of course Pryde had defected. He expected all of the old Imperials to defect over time, all joining the cult of fawning worshipers on the corpse of Exegol as it spiraled to it’s and their deaths.

When he thought of it like that he almost understood. He knew what it felt like to grow tired of fighting. But unlike them he hadn’t given in yet.

“Let him,” Kylo said. “If this alliance is going to work I’ll need ambassadors to the Final Order.”

Hux looked at him with distinct distaste. It almost bordered on pity. He opened his mouth to speak before turning and leaving without so much as a salute.

Kylo felt the movement, raising a hand to prevent Vicrul from following and tormenting the general. “Not this time,” he warned.

Vicrul nodded and didn’t follow.

Kylo knew what it all looked like. It looked like he’d given up, like he’d rolled over for the Emperor and given in, allowed the Final Order to take him and the First Order without a single fight for dominance. It looked like he was allowing his army to defect, allowing them to betray him. 

In a way he was. He allowed the old Imperials to leave, to join their former master. He knew it would be easier to dispose of them that way.

It was with these thoughts that he saw Rey. Sunlight made her hair gleam, the red strands hidden in the brown an odd mirror to the red lines of his own helm. He recognized the Alderaanian folds of her cloak and hood even though her hair was almost shamefully unadorned. A waterskin strapped to her back belied old habits from the desert. The dust turned her white garments golden, or maybe that was the sun shining upon her.

She wore a necklace, a local thing, tribal and festival in origin.

Kylo glanced at his Knights then decided he no longer cared. They’d seen worse. He focused on her, letting the connection fully snap into place.

He heard children. Laughter. Music, drumming, shouting. He could  _ feel _ the dancers off to the side, could feel the chaotic whirl of their spinning begging him to join as surely as it begged her. 

He could feel the spring burbling around him, his hands grasping for a shore that was no longer within reach.

He could feel her eyes on him. If he didn’t know any better he would swear she shuddered.

“Palpatine wants you dead,” Kylo said. If that wasn’t enough to reveal to his Knights who he spoke to then nothing would. It worked, he felt them cluster around him as though daring an outsider to intrude.

“Serving another master?” Rey said. He could feel she meant to mock him but she only sounded tired.

“No, I have other plans.” He could feel her relief flood through the bond. Confusion followed, her own confusion at her own relief. They circled each other like pacing beasts, slowly spiraling in. Kylo wondered which of them would step back first. She answered that one, stepping back as he stepped too close.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to do so many things.

“I offered you my hand once,” he said. “You wanted to take it.”

Rey looked around, like she was afraid someone might catch her talking to someone no one else could see. The crowd around her must have assuaged her fears because she let her guard down. He felt it as she relaxed.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

Her tension was different now, defiance rather than fear. “You could have killed me,” she accused. “Why didn’t you?”

He ignored her question same as she ignored his. The spiral began again as he stepped closer to her. “You can’t hide from me, Rey,” he warned. “Tell me, do you still count the days?”

Rey growled at him, baring teeth and he shivered. His purr must have reached through the bond to her, he could feel the warmth in her chest. “I see through the cracks in your mask,” she warned.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he whispered. He found his voice again. “But I can’t go back. Soon enough you won’t be able to either. I’ll find you, Rey. When I do, I’ll offer you my hand again. This time you’ll take it.”

“We’ll see,” she said, chin held high as she glared him in the eyes. Even through the mask she met his eyes, daring him to act.

He did, reaching up and ripping away the beads strung around her neck.

Rey fled, the bond closing around them both. Kylo struggled to breathe as he looked down at the stone beads in his hand.

Strange, they’d seemed so much brighter around her neck, pink and yellow and so much gold. Here they were just dull white stones. 

*****

Pasaana.

The anthropologists informed him this was a world of dust farmers, capturing the seeds blown in the wind and cultivating them in caves beneath the surface. A world of subsistence farmers; they had little to offer the First Order. Their skills were ill-suited for life aboard ship. They were humanoid but their bulk and snouts made them poor infiltrators. The First Order had let them be for the most part. Regardless, they had a patrol in the area meant to deter piracy. Those stormtroopers were willing, able, eager to get some action in against Resistance forces.

It gave the  _ Finalizer _ time to make the jump. Within hours the  _ Finalizer _ entered orbit around the dusty dry desert world.

Kylo Ren insisted on flying down alone as part of the initial ground team. His TIE Whisper was dismantled and unfueled as technicians cowered underneath claiming minor repairs due to debris impacts from the Exegol system. Instead he mounted a spare Whisper, one unmodified for his personal use. No matter, he wouldn’t be needing a hyperdrive today. It had a fully functional nav computer, one unaltered by a Sith Wayfinder. That was enough.

This unaltered TIE dropped from the  _ Finalizer _ and fell toward the planet’s surface.

He could see the scene from here. The  _ Millennium Falcon _ lay captured like a netted bird, under full control of eager and delighted stormtroopers. He received word of a wookie prisoner through the comm. The Resistance crew was on the ground on the run and could the incoming TIE please do something about them.

Kylo thought about testing whether he could Force-choke a stormtrooper through a comm for daring to presume he was just another pilot. But then he saw Rey run out into the open as though daring him to take the shot.

He didn’t, instead catching a glimpse of her idea.

Kylo Ren angled his TIE to skim the ground at searing speed, aimed to run her down.

This was a pointlessly stupid idea. If she didn’t dive out of the way she’d die and then he’d crash and die in return. But maybe a quick fiery death was easier than struggling against this bond that held them both. Maybe it was what she wanted too.

Instead she ran into the widest part of the canyon, glanced back, and knelt. Her sabre glowed to life, the blade beckoning him.

Kylo shuddered as he felt what she wanted. She was acting just as reckless as he felt, daring him to run her down so she could…

He giggled and obliged, kept the TIE level and at constant speed.

“Fire already!” Kylo ignored the stormtrooper on his comm. This would either be beautiful or it would be a beautiful end. He wondered which he would prefer.

Rey jumped.

Kylo laughed with glee as she vaulted his TIE, her lightsabre reaching down to slice off one wing. He let go of the controls and hung on to his control chair for dear life.

The loss of a wing in vacuum would not have crippled a Whisper like this. But in atmosphere, this close to the ground, the loss of a wing caused the Whisper to roll. The sand reached up and grabbed his TIE, shredding the second wing. The round cockpit rolled and bounced like a thrown billiard ball as both Rey and Kylo laughed and laughed and laughed.

The cockpit rolled to a stop against a rocky outcropping. The engines behind him burned, the world spun, and he couldn’t stop giggling. He pawed at the straps keeping him attached to the seat, dropping down to the ceiling of his overturned cockpit. He crawled out of the broken window and laid on the sand, watching the sky spin around him as they both basked in the shared triumph humming through the bond.

Of all the courtship dances he’d ever been a part of, this one was the most fun. But still not the most dangerous.

*****

Night fell on Pasaana. Kylo was sore all over. Much of that had been from the crash, though much of that was from the repeated beatings he’d endured when his Knights learned what he’d done. He couldn’t even tell whose idea it had been, his or hers, or if it even mattered.

The worst punch came from Kris-Fer. She’d demanded to know if he was trying to kill himself and he couldn’t answer. For a blind woman who used a spear she had a wicked right hook.

Didn’t mean it hadn’t been fun. It gave him an excuse to push away the anguish, the worry, the despair that lurked in the back of his mind and hers. He knew that meant he was pushing it through the bond onto Rey but at that moment he didn’t care. He’d just watched her destroy a transport of successful, joyful, loyal stormtroopers with Force Lightning, she deserved the chance to wallow in all the emotions she needed for a proper fall to darkness. His veil was here for her to take if she dared.

She hadn’t dared. Not really. The most he’d felt were gentle tugs, the most he’d noticed was an odd lightening of his mood. If this were a call to the light it was the most subtle call to Gray he’d ever felt.

The  _ Finalizer _ stayed in orbit. It had standing orders not to leave without both him and a hyperspace trace on that ship, the old pile of junk Rey and her little Resistance friends had used to flee. No matter, they had the  _ Millennium Falcon _ in the hold ready to be dismantled by those same techs who delighted in constantly disassembling his own TIE Whisper. Chewbacca sat in a holding cell awaiting his return, though he figured he might allow Vicrul and Ap’lek handle the wookie’s interrogation instead. Even the Sith dagger awaited his study in his own quarters.

He could still sense her on the edge of his awareness. Despair bled into hope then insistent demand. Her thoughts grew loud as she tried to stay physically quiet. He stayed quiet, watching her while his Knights fanned out into the Festival of the Ancestors for their own amusement. 

Kylo received a comm transmission from the  _ Finalizer _ , the ping in his helm incessant. He allowed the connection. “Yes?” he demanded.

“Shouldn’t we leave?” Hux demanded.

“And go where?” Kylo asked. “Do you have a hyperspace trace on the Resistance ship?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then until you do we stay put,” Kylo snapped. “Find the Scavenger!” He didn’t wait for Hux to answer, instead turning off the connection.

“They didn’t jump to hyperspace.”

Kylo looked over at Kuruk Ren. Despite the festival his Knights still kept a guard on him. Though whether they were there to guard him or to keep him from doing something else rash was a debate Kylo didn’t want to have.

“Of course they didn’t,” Kylo said.

“They’re on the planet?”

Kylo shook his head and looked up. A single point of light moved across the sky. If he squinted he thought he might see its triangular shape.

He could feel her. He could feel her triumph as she found what she searched for. Triumph changed as she looked at a holocron with a mind of its own, as it opened of its own accord. Unease. Dread. Disbelief. Rage. Revan’s hands on her as she swung her sabre at the hologram.

Kylo activated his sabre and stepped in, catching hers.

Rey’s eyes suddenly focused on him, fear written on her features. He knew what he must look like, somehow he could  _ feel _ the holocron’s hologram enveloping him. For one terrible moment he was Revan and then it must have moved. Her eyes flickered to the side then back at him.

“Why?” she demanded.

“You’ll have to be more elaborate than that,” he warned. He twisted his sabre, tossing her blade aside. He circled her, his sabre twirled in one hand, as she stood with the sabre in one hand and the dagger in the other.

Rey struck. He parried the blow while Kuruk got out of the way, giving Kylo room to fight with his invisible opponent. “Why any of this?!” she demanded.

“You spoke to Revan.”

The terrified look in her eyes betrayed everything. Revan may not have been thorough but it was clear Rey had listened, even if she didn’t believe. Yet.

“My mother was the daughter of Vader,” Kylo said, beating back her frantic strikes. “Your father was the son of the Emperor. What Palpatine doesn’t know is that we’re a dyad in the Force, Rey. The two that are one. The two that restore the one. The two that  **become** the one. Whatever you want to call it, the translation’s too ancient to understand anymore.”

“Shut up!”

Kylo ducked as she sliced at him with the Sith dagger. He needed to be wary of that blade, Sith blades tended to leave terrible wounds that never stopped bleeding until the wielder allowed it. “Together we killed Snoke,” Kylo insisted. “I killed the last Jedi. Together we’ll kill the last Sith. Then it’s over! The past will die and we will kill it and then thousands of years of conflict can finally  **end** !”

“That’s not what this is!” Rey cried. She raised her sabre in both hands, slicing down. Kylo stepped back from the sabre’s reach, not wanting to know the wreckage she caused in his quarters. He had things in there.

“Then what is it! Tell me!”

She struck again and he knocked her blade from its course into a cascade of debris. What remained of a side table shattered, Vader’s melted helm falling to the ground before him.

Grandfather’s helm. One of Palpatine’s conduits. Yet another betrayal, another artifact his torn and bleeding soul had latched onto to make the pain go away. No longer.

He stepped back and dared Rey to come at him again. Instead she ran, the bond snapping closed.

Kylo looked around. He pointedly ignored as Kuruk stared like he’d somehow seen and heard the whole exchange. He instead tapped his comm to connect him to the  _ Finalizer _ . “The Scavenger is in my quarters,” he said. “Lock down the ship. Bring her to me.”

He would bring her to Exegol to exorcise the Emperor’s half-rotted ghost from the galaxy and then…

...he didn’t know.

He left Vader’s helm in the dust behind him.

No more conduits. No more betrayal. He would be free of Palpatine one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest thanks to [magpie-trove](https://magpie-trove.tumblr.com/post/190506189981/a-deep-dive-into-the-pasaana-force-bond) for her in-extreme-depth analysis of the Pasaana scene. It was in-depth enough for me to recreate the dialogue you read here while hopefully twisting it enough to keep it in line with how I've already altered _The Rise of Skywalker_ itself.


	12. Madness

The holding chambers still smelled like furious wookie. In all likelihood Chewbacca had expressed his scent glands out of pure spite. Now the smell would take days to find and then scrub away lest it be allowed to fester and turn rancid. 

There was nothing worse than the stench of rancid wookie musk.

Kylo Ren carried a device, a noise dampener small enough to fit into his pocket. He came to the cell where Vicrul and Ap’lek stood guard and handed them the noise dampener.

Vicrul nodded.

“Any activity?” Kylo asked.

Ap’lek shook his head. “Nothing.”

Vicrul snickered.

Kylo fixed him with a level glare. “Stop it,” he ordered. “Turn your shadow outward.”

Vicrul huffed and took a deep breath. That was all the indication he’d turned his power over fear from the man inside the cell to the corridors around.

“Do not interfere,” Kylo warned, pointing to both of them. “No matter what happens.”

Ap’lek nodded. They stood guard over the otherwise blank and boring cell while Kylo Ren stepped inside.

Vicrul had been… thorough. Armitage Hux cowered in a corner, his hands cuffed together before him. The man’s breath came ragged, sobs so soft they might have been silent. The stench of fear overpowered even the omnipresent wookie musk. The tiny smells of blood and burnt flesh betrayed Hux’s twin wounds, the blast to the leg that hobbled him and the strike to the shoulder that had stunned him for capture.

Hux wouldn’t look at him. No matter. Kylo didn’t require Hux to look at him. He took a deep breath, focused his mind on Hux’s own, and reached in.

Images flooded Kylo’s mind, not of his mind or of Rey’s, but Hux.

_ Immense pride at Starkiller Base consuming its very first star. Impassioned speeches about order and tranquility and the utter belief behind every word. Betrayal as Snoke brushes him aside for this boy, this dark haired witch for no reason other than his vaunted name. _

_ For so much more than his vaunted name. Powerful witchcraft at the boy’s, no, the man’s fingertips. A spitting red blade. Untrained, undisciplined, a monster like no other. Suspicions that Ren had killed his own master twice over, money placed that Snoke would simply be a third dead body left behind in Ren’s footsteps. _

_ The loss of Starkiller. The New Republic burns, the Resistance flees in the face of overwhelming power. Revenge will be sweet. Snoke will punish Ren for losing them Starkiller then they can begin again, so much easier with the Outer Rim already leaving the New Republic and the Core turned inward to save their own precarious positions. Let them. Let them. The First Order will welcome the Outer Rim with open arms and Coruscant will forget that a city-planet needs to import food. Let them starve. _

_ The loss of the  Supermacy , Snoke’s death, anger that Ren finds a scapegoat to hide behind. Nevermind it, Phasma is dead she can’t pay her debts anyway. Mourn her later, never enough time. I miss her.  _

_ No more masters to hide behind, nobody left to kill, Ren slowly going mad with power and nothing to spend it on. Is this insanity or the Force, does it even matter? Is there a difference? _

_ Foolish quest for the Scavenger. The generals all feel it, Ren knows exactly where she is. He’s chasing her like it’s a game, she’s his new master to follow until he tires of her and she becomes corpse number four. Tired of waiting. So many are tired of waiting for him to tire of her. _

_ The Emperor. Ren doesn’t take it seriously, too many of the First Order are old Imperials, they’re defecting, they’re leaving. Everything I’ve ever worked for gone, all of it gone, leaving to serve their former master. Taking the First Order with them. What becomes of us now? What’s left what’s left what’s left… _

_ I have fought and striven and sacrificed too much to let them take it from me. _

_ The Scavenger again. Why? Ren’s grasping at straws, at old feuds. The Emperor is so much more than this, so much worse. I heard the stories, he made the Empire love him, the old Imperials still love him. The First Order was never ruled by love, why would it be? Distant space witches with their Force and their powers and all he does is choke me for it, none of the grand miracles of the stories no fleets summoned from the ground of a dead world, he could have had a cult worshiping at his  **feet** like the Emperor does with his Imperials if only… _

_ If only what? I don't know. Sith witchcraft, magic black as the Void, the Emperor cackles while we fall to our knees... _

_ Everything I’ve ever wanted, is that all it becomes? Old men crawling on their hands and knees to worship the past? I deserve more! Ren could have been, could **be** that, could have any number of cultists at his feet, I would have gladly… _

_ I will gladly... _

_ No no No nO nooo no no no he’s listening can’t I can’t I want to I need to… _

_ Please… _

_ Don’t let it end like this… _

Kylo gripped the door frame to hold himself up as the thoughts assaulted his mind. His breath shuddered in his chest as his vision swam at the assault. A thousand thoughts poured into him all at once, over an eternity, none of them his own. He looked at Hux to find the man looking at him with wide open eyes and an expression that bordered on fascination.

Hux moved first, turning away to look at his shackled hands as he curled into a ball on the floor. “Kill me now,” he begged. “Fast, slow, I don’t care. Just end it. Please.”

Kylo pulled himself to his full height and stepped into the middle of the holding cell.

“You’ve gone mad,” Hux continued, as though this would make Kylo snap and kill him. “The Emperor returns from the dead with a fleet of a thousand ships. Our fleet abandons us to join him. We can’t win without leadership and you’re off chasing holocrons and scavengers and…”

Kylo merely watched as Hux unraveled before him. He didn’t have to lift a finger to break the man, Hux did all the breaking himself. 

“Everything I’ve ever worked for, everything I’ve done,” Hux whispered. “It meant nothing. It all belongs to the past, to those wretched Imperials. I couldn’t make you see, you may as well have  **joined** them for all you cared. But the Resistance. They have no chance against him but neither do you. At least it was something. Some chance to save what I’ve ever worked for. If I can save something, anything, then my death is worth it.”

Kylo almost understood. “Only your death?” he asked.

“My pain,” Hux added. “My life. Any price. I will gladly pay it.”

“Stand up,” Kylo ordered.

It was a cruel order. Hux could barely stand before with his untreated leg wound and a cane. Now, trapped here without treatment and exhausted from ill mental use, with his hands bound before him, Hux had no chance of obeying. He struggled to his hands and knees then to his knees then tried to drag his feet below him. His leg gave out, sending the man crashing back to his knees. Hux cried out in pain and gave up, head bowed in shame as he couldn’t even stand.

Kylo heard these thoughts and more, so many more of Hux berating himself, _can’t even stand, can’t even get that far_. Instead Kylo walked a quiet circle around his tortured general, not even a general anymore. The First Order was fracturing, old Imperials defecting just as Hux feared. _A coup is inevitable, the Imperials chafe at their Supreme Leader’s mere presence, not their Emperor. Serve only their Emperor. Grit and grate at the charade, only a matter of time, biding their time, they'll kill us all I had to._ Perhaps Sidious had something more distasteful in mind. He’d learned of Essence Transfer from the darker holocrons, with his own fractured presence in the Force what would stop Sidious from simply taking his body for his own?

Kylo brushed his own thoughts away, instead focusing on those thoughts that flooded from Hux. _Failure, lost, all of it lost. Nothing left. Why even try? He’s gone mad, please kill me._ He reached out and gently placed a hand on Hux’s head, carding his fingers through the red hair. Hux’s thoughts all stopped as he gasped.

“I may be mad,” Kylo admitted. “Perhaps there has never been a sane Force-user in this galaxy. But that’s why I need the Scavenger. She and I will kill Darth Sidious, the same as we killed Snoke, the same as we killed Skywalker. Every Imperial is free to leave the First Order to join their former master and I will kill them all for it. I will see Exegol itself burn in the flame of its own dead sun.”

“How?” Hux whispered.

“I will leave.”

Hux looked up at Kylo with something that looked almost like confused hope. It was a plea, a desperate wish that he had a plan. Kylo stroked Hux’s neck as he stood behind the kneeling man. “I will leave,” Kylo said again. “The Knights of Ren will take the  _ Night Buzzard _ ahead of me. I will not return until I’ve won. Emperor Palpatine will lay dead before me and his fleet routed into the oblivion of Exegol’s own dead sun.”

The broken look on Hux’s face unnerved him. It straddled the border between pity and adoration and Kylo did not like it.

“I expect the  _ Finalizer _ to be in one piece when I return,” Kylo warned. “Your second and third officers are Imperials. I don’t trust them. Nor should you. They will fight to take this ship to Exegol to burn. That cannot happen.”

Adoration won over and the emotion bled off of Hux in waves.

“When I leave you will retake the ship,” Kylo ordered. “You will retake it in the name of the First Order and you will flee to the Outer Rim. I will find you there.”

Adoration gave way to a hint of worry. “What if you never come back?” he asked.

“If this ship is all that remains of the First Order, that is enough,” Kylo said. He stepped back. Hux’s kneel faltered, he’d been leaning against Kylo’s legs. “The medical droids will attend to your wounds,” he said. “You’ll know when to begin.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” Hux fell forward onto his hands like some sort of extreme bow. “I will retake the _Finalizer_. I will…”

Kylo turned and left. He beckoned Vicrul and Ap’lek to follow as he called for a medical droid to attend to the prisoner.

Vicrul looked longingly at the corridor behind as the holding chambers fell out of view. “No,” Kylo said.

Vicrul growled.

“If this works, never again,” Kylo said. “If it doesn’t…” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

*****

The  _ Night Buzzard _ shot away into hyperspace. Kylo felt uneasy about sending his Knights of Ren ahead to Exegol. But they were all Force-sensitive. They all had weapons they’d trained their whole lives with. They could defend themselves against fawning cultists. At least they could clear a path through the cult to the empty Sith Throne and the crumbling amphitheatre that surrounded it.

Kylo watched from his TIE Whisper as the  _ Finalizer _ took off as well, jumping to hyperspace in a different direction. He honestly didn’t believe he would ever see the ship again. The thought saddened him.

The comm on his Whisper opened, voice contact only. “My Lord,” Beaumont began.

Kylo’s eyebrows raised under his mask. Beaumont was not even attempting to maintain a veneer of subtlety, this was bad.

“My Patron,” Beaumont continued. “I bring news. Rey brought me the Sith dagger with the inscription. I translated it for her.” He sighed. “They’re flying to Kef Bir now.”

“The remains of the second Death Star,” Kylo realized.

“Yes, my Lord. The inscription mentioned a second Wayfinder. She seeks the Emperor’s copy.”

“She’s trying to get to Exegol on her own.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Are you… safe?” Kylo asked. Beaumont’s return to the formality he used before joining the Resistance was unnerving.

“I… don’t know,” Beaumont admitted. “My Lord, General Organa…” He sighed on the other side of the connection, the other side of the galaxy. “Your mother pulled everything from my mind. She says... She told me to tell you. She loves you.”

Beaumont’s words his Kylo in the chest like a bowcaster’s bolt. He burned from the inside out. But no matter how much it hurt, he could never go back. Especially now. “I… see.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Escape if you must,” Kylo said. “If you can. I am no longer your Patron.”

“My Lord?”

“I release you from my service,” Kylo said. He cut the comm feed, letting the connection die.

Beaumont was on his own now. And so was Kylo Ren. He punched in the coordinates for the Endor system and pushed his Whisper into hyperspace.

*****

The Whisper dropped out of hyperspace to the sight of Endor. White and red banding painted the giant planet, storms swirling in the gas giant’s turbulent atmosphere. Dozens of moons danced around the giant planet in a whirling cascade of orbital resonances. Nine of them were large enough to be of potential import, large enough to be considered for exploitation by the galaxy at large. Only the New Republic’s fascination with the toy-like Ewoks on the forest moon kept the Endor system from being properly colonized.

Kef Bir, the Ewok name for the simpler designation IX3244-C, was a waterworld dotted with a few tiny islands. Tidal forces from Endor and the resonances keeping these moons in place caused gigantic waves over the endless ocean making the planet dangerous for any sort of surface exploration. The moon wasn’t even useful for undersea mining, the ocean reached so deep the pressure turned the mantle to ice.

Luckily a portion of the second Death Star peeked up over the waves, trapped as it was on the shelf of a grassy island. Kylo dove toward the Death Star, skimming the rusted mossy surface where ocean salt had worn away the duraplate shielding. By Chaos, and only 30 years ago this had flown in the skies above Endor awaiting completion.

He found open access to a hangar bay and descended, his TIE finding uneven purchase on the wreckage below. He dropped the hatch and descended into the corridors of the wrecked Death Star seeking his prize.

Her prize.

Their prize?

Didn’t matter. What mattered was finding it first.


	13. Kef Bir

He found the Wayfinder in the Emperor’s wrecked throne room. The arms of the throne itself held secret compartments full of small treasures that would have been accessible with the push of a button or a thought to the Force. Kylo considered the Emperor’s lightsabre but left it alone.

He could feel Rey here in the ruins as she climbed access shafts, as she dangled across precipices, as she followed the beacons of darkness that those small treasures represented. He left them there for her to find.

But not the Wayfinder. He took that for his own, hiding it within his own cloak as he stepped back into shadows and waited for her to come.

Rey looked terrible. Revan’s words hung heavily on her mind, coalescing into a vision Kylo watched even as Rey fought against her own darkening veil. Palpatine hung heavily on her mind, the family she so desperately wanted clashing against the terrible reality. The Resistance hung heavily on her mind, the growing drift from those mundane people who called themselves her friends as they lifted her onto a pedestal she never wanted.

Kylo felt all these thoughts and more as the bond between them pressed in on him, threatening to swallow him whole. 

Her vision broke and she watched the shadows of the throne room like she expected a predator to be lurking.

Like she expected him to be lurking.

She pawed at the throne, opened the secret compartments. She found her grandfather’s lightsabre, the smooth beauty of the weapon betraying his love of fine things. For a moment she was entranced, letting herself sit upon the throne as she ran her fingers along the weapon’s soft electrum-plated hilt.

Then he moved and suddenly all her attention fell on him.

Rey stood up, dropping her grandfather’s sabre onto the seat of the throne. She tried to project confidence but the veneer was thin. Pain. Fear. Distrust. Worry. Most of all exhaustion. She was as tired of fighting as he was.

“You spoke to Revan,” Kylo said.

She looked down, refusing to meet his eyes.

“You know it’s true,” Kylo said, stepping forward.

Rey shook her head. “It’s not,” she said. “It can’t be.”

“As one rises in the light the other sinks into darkness,” Kylo said, repeating Revan’s own words. “They will trade light and dark like veils.”

“It’s not just a veil, Ben,” Rey insisted. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“No? Light and dark are only the most fluid of qualities. We’ve traded emotions, passions, serenities, thoughts. Deny it.”

Rey backed up as Kylo advanced on her, step by single laborious step. Still he came as she pressed against the wall, unable to escape further.

“Senses, sensations,” Kylo whispered. He pressed against the bond, letting it pull him in as he brought up their own shared memories and shoved those thoughts into her mind. The embrace of phantom fur from Kashyyyk. Gorging himself in front of Inara to sate Rey’s gnawing hunger. Their sabre styles slowly homogenizing. The press of hands together across parsecs as Luke Skywalker watches in horror. Leia’s fingertips branding his cheek as she strokes Rey’s face.

“It’s just a bond,” Rey whispered. “Snoke did this. He said. That’s all this is.”

“Trading physical objects across time and space.” He stood before her, close enough to press her bodily into the ruined wall. “Even physical traits.”

She reached up to shove him away. He leaned in and pinned her against the wall, one hand pressed to her belly. She gasped and grabbed his shoulders, trying to push him off.

“I know where your pain goes,” Kylo growled. “Let me show you.” He closed his eyes and pulled with the Force.

The bond swallowed him. He screamed bubbles into the spring around him as he sank to beautiful terrible oblivion.

Her hands gripped his shoulders, fingers like claws as she shuddered in agony. The floor, the world, the Force itself shifted as he fell to his knees and brought her with him. Pain lanced through his belly, his bones, his whole body cried out with a pain he’d only ever glimpsed in nightmare. They held each other close as their gasps, whimpers, screams echoed in the ruined throne room and the Force  _ sang _ .

He buried his face in her neck and gasped, inhaling her scent. But that scent was…

The pain faded into memory and whimpered aftershocks as she held onto him for deal life, unwilling to let go. Unwilling to accept what he’s done to them.

Kylo inhaled Rey’s scent, filling his senses with the physical evidence of what he’d done.

He felt… light. A physical weight was missing from his frame as he helped her stand.

Rey’s eyes opened in shock. She let go of him as she ran her hands over herself, the flat chest, the hard limbs, the bulge in her crotch. She looked up, horror clearly marked on her angular masculine face.

Kylo purred as he stepped back. His own clothes fit poorly, his shoulders narrow and his hips confined. His undergarments brushed unbanded breasts, making him extremely aware of this new female body.

He’d stolen her sex from her and given her his own.

“The Force will not be denied,” Kylo said, arms spread to invite her scrutiny. “This is just the beginning and you know it. Not even Revan knows where the end lies.”

“The end lies here,” Rey growled and Kylo couldn’t help the shiver at the delightful change in her voice. It felt like being caressed.

“The end lies on Exegol,” Kylo corrected. He reached into his cloak and pulled the Emperor’s Wayfinder.

Rey lunged for it and Kylo had to step back as she unbalanced on her new center of gravity.

“No,” Kylo promised. He summoned strength from the Force and crushed the Wayfinder in one hand. It crumbled, taking with it all the maps it might have offered. “The only way you’re getting to Exegol is with me.”

Rey screamed and activated her sabre. She charged.

Kylo activated his own and parried her thrusts. By Chaos, she was strong like this. Still lithe, still thin but gangly and long and she had so much more strength behind her strikes than before. Maybe it was the rage, maybe it was the physical change, but it made Kylo shiver.

She drove him out of the throne room toward the chasm behind. Kylo ignored the drop down, instead jumping up above to the Death Star’s skin. He felt her fury as she charged after him.

They were too evenly matched. Endurance would win this fight. He had the upper hand here: better training, more understanding, he even had her physical advantage as she stumbled in her new body while he relaxed into it. 

And then it all stopped.

He felt it. It felt like a knife blade to the gut. His sabre fell from his hand in shock as Leia just… ended.

He distantly heard Rey scream as she stabbed him in the belly with his own sabre.

Kylo fell to his knees. Rey kept screaming, collapsed next to him as she grabbed her own belly, as she felt the sabre wound as surely as he did.

One reached out for the other, though they didn’t know who first. Her hand slid over his chest to the wound, his hand over her belly to the space where her organs once lay. Their eyes fell closed and the Force flowed like a circuit, like a river, like red ropes tied tight.

When his eyes opened she was still Rey. Still herself. Female again. He came back to awareness of his own body, everything back where it should be. Male again.

“Why?” Kylo asked.

Rey didn’t look at him. 

“Why, Rey?”

“You would have done the same for me,” Rey muttered, still not looking at him.

The bond hummed between them, the spring flowing free around him as he floated. She was terrified. She believed, yes, but that didn’t mean she dared accept it. Revan had not been kind in the face of her ignorance and she still recalled their words. Her life was all she had and she didn’t want to give it up. The Force had already taken so much from her, separated her from family and friends, bound her to a destiny, she refused to give up everything she was, is, and will be no matter how mediocre.

He used to feel that way too. When had that changed?

“Why didn’t you take my hand?” he asked instead.

She still wouldn’t look at him. If she looked it would mean the dyad was real. “I did want to take your hand,” she said. “Ben’s hand.”

But Ben didn’t exist anymore, not really. He’d chosen a new name to fit his darkened veil. As she rose in light the bond ensured he fell to darkness. The Jedi Rey would never have her Jedi Ben. The only way out would be to let go, to allow themselves to balance in Gray. Together.

Finally she looked at him. He held out his hand once again, what he hoped would be the last time.

_ Please, Rey, _ he thought, knowing she would hear.  _ We can end this. Come with me to Exegol. Together. _

She pulled away from him as she slowly shook her head. She ran off down the wreckage to the hangar bay where she’d pulled the location of his TIE Whisper from his mind.

“Kriff,” he swore. Now what?

*****

The  _ Millennium Falcon _ was gone, they’d barely known he was here. His own ship was space-jacked and Kylo Ren refused to listen as Rey found the Wayfinder that had infected the nav computer of his Whisper like a virus. The  _ Finalizer _ had no idea where he was, he’d made sure of it.

He was marooned. He was soaking wet. He was sore. Worse, he had to listen to Rey’s desperate attempts to close this bond that tied them together. Mere mental walls weren’t enough anymore, not when he could run his hands through his own hair and feel her shiver in return.

He paced the ruins of the Death Star trying to think of a way out of this one. He came to an edge, the ocean roiling beneath him. The tide had fallen revealing hangar bays below where he’d parked and lost his Whisper. Was it worth it to make the attempt?

“It’s always worth the attempt.”

Kylo turned at the sudden voice. Ice gripped his heart and his knees nearly gave way. This had to be a hallucination. There was no possible way his father stood on the ruins with him, alive and present and, well, and dry. That fact alone was enough to convince Kylo that this wasn’t real.

“Who says I’m real?” Han Solo asked. “I’m here, that’s enough.”

“You’re a memory,” Kylo said, his mind grasping for some purchase in reality. Han Solo had not been Force-sensitive. The skill to becoming a Force ghost was a dark difficult path that required throwing oneself into the Living Force with such strength that the Cosmic Force twisted at the impact.

Han shrugged.

Memory or no, seeing Han hurt almost as much as killing him had. 

Han picked his way carefully over the uneven wreckage. He approached with the same surety that he had on Starkiller, secure in the knowledge that whatever happened was necessary. Kylo stood shaking, the pain washing over him. Pain turned to fear and anger on Rey’s end but he had no need for such emotions here. Let her destroy something fragile. Kylo instead watched as something fragile he’d once destroyed reformed in front of his eyes.

“Ben,” Solo said.

The depth of love in that simple name nearly brought Kylo to tears. Starkiller came flooding back and for a moment he stood on a catwalk over a reactor vent that descended to the kyber core as Solo approached with that same surety, that same love.

The same words came to him. “I know what I have to do,” he said, voice wavering. “But I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”

The memory continued as Solo raised a shaking hand to stroke Kylo’s cheek, a father offering his own strength to the son he loved. To make Kylo’s next action easier to take.

“You do,” Solo whispered.

Kylo raised his lightsabre between then, the same as he’d done once before. “Dad…”

Solo smiled. “I know.”

A thousand emotions roiled through Kylo Ren as he broke the memory, as he refused to activate the blade and kill again. Instead he turned and flung his lightsabre into the sea.

Regret and pain warred with triumph and determination. He broke once, never again. Not now, not ever.

When he turned around the memory was gone. The reactor vent became the sea roiling at low tide. The catwalk became the ruins of the Death Star reaching eternally down to the moon’s icy core.

The hangar bay he’d parked the Whisper in was wrecked, thirty years of weather destroying any ship that might have remained. But below the tide marks, below the water line…

He tore the cloak from his shoulders and removed the outer layers of his uniform.

Ben Solo was no pampered city-dweller. He was no ship-bound spacer. He was no desert sand rat. He was a Prince of Alderaan and if there was one thing only an Alderaanian could do…

He let the Force guide as he slid down the wet slimy duraplate panels of the Death Star ruins and flung himself into the sea.

Ben used the currents that tossed him around in the open ocean, riding them to the surface then below as he swam his way across to a hangar bay that barely peeked above the low tide mark. If there were any ships still intact and within reach on this ruined wreck of a Death Star it would be there, where the waves were few and the water preserved. 

There he would find what he sought.

The Death Star once had TIE/sr Scouts.


	14. Exegol

A single Imperial TIE Scout came out of hyperspace into the middle of a war.

Xyston-class Star Destroyers hung impotently in the sky, the illusionist forgetting to control his creations. A few feeble TIEs fought against a Resistance fleet that appeared to be cobbled together out of spare ships, civilian freighters, and a few military fighters tithed to appease an obligation.

Ben ignored the battle, instead dropping below it to skim the planet’s surface. He found a Rebel-era X-Wing sitting bereft next to the Sith Temple. He parked next to it, grabbed the Imperial stormtrooper’s rifle he’d salvaged, and entered the temple.

He ran into a nightmare.

Ben’s heart sank. He should never have sent them.

His Knights. His friends.

He did this.

They were all alive and that made it worse.

Ap’lek and Vicrul circled him, their weapons raised and their mental intrusions brushing against his psyche. Ushar and Trudgen rolled their shoulders and hoisted their weapons, showing off their own strengths. Cardo held his arm cannon raised at rest but he still fingered his bandolier of grenades. Kris-fer stalked him, spear pointed at him in warning. Even Kuruk lurked in the shadows waiting for a good shot.

“We weren’t sure you’d make it on time,” Ushar taunted.

“I had to,” Ben whispered.

“Why?” Ap’lek asked. “You don’t have to. Not anymore.”

“The last Jedi is dead,” Kris-fer said. “You’ve done your part.”

“Just like Anakin,” Cardo said. “Your dyad grandsire. You did it. You finished what Vader started.”

“Rest,” Trudgen tempted. “You’ve earned it.”

“Palpatine will take the girl as his own,” Ushar said. “And you can come back to us. She’ll welcome you with open arms.”

“You can still sit at the feet of your Empress,” Vicrul said. “Everything you ever wanted.”

“There will be other dyads,” Kris-fer said. “Let them finish the Sith. You’ve already done the hard part.”

“Let them finish it,” Trudgen said.

“Come home,” Ap’lek tempted.

Ben shuddered as his Knights taunted, tempted him. Palpatine did this to them. Palpatine took their minds, twisted them into seductive monsters wearing the trusted masks of his friends.

“Let him take the girl,” Ushar said. “Let her take your darkest shadows. She always wanted to see you in the light. Give her what she wants.”

Ben felt tears fall down his face. This wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. They were supposed to kill it all, Jedi and Sith, not to allow the imbalance to continue. Not enable the Sith to retake the galaxy.

“Rey,” he whispered.

He gasped as he felt her. She stood in the Sith throne room with her weapon raised. One of the Skywalker sabres lit her hands as she felt him too.

“Ben,” she whispered, hope flooding her face. Her own tears traced tracks of despair down her cheeks.

No. The Sith ended here. He smiled, nodding at her once.

“You came,” Rey whispered.

“Together,” Ben whispered.

Rey slowly passed her lightsabre behind her as Ben reached behind himself to take it. Anakin’s sabre passed to him, the metal warm with her handprint. He drew it out before him.

His Knights all stepped back.

Ben raised the sabre before him, daring them to attack.

Ap’lek and Kris-fer struck first, their long handled weapons attempting to confine him. He tossed the polearms away and parried a strike from Vicrul’s scythe. He reached out through the Force as Cardo leveled his flamethrower, squeezing a grenade to explode. Cardo dropped his weapon as he focused inward, trying to contain cascading explosions.

Ben brought his weapon around, slicing at the helms of his Knights. Vicrul screamed as Kris-fer ducked and struck at his calves. Ben leapt up out of the way, landing behind Ushar and impaling the larger man.

Ap’lek rushed him, halberd lowered for the charge. Ben focused on Ap’lek’s feet, using the Force to throw him back into a crevasse.

Trudgen struck. The reinforced warcleaver did not yield to the lightsabre as Trudgen slammed his blade into Ben’s strikes. Ben retreated, unable to get a clear strike against the battering force of the larger man. He felt Kris-fer behind him, waiting for him to approach while she twirled her spear and readied to strike.

Ben had the most ridiculous thought, that his Knights weren’t fighting to kill. They were looking to  _ subdue _ . They had to keep him alive so Palpatine could take Rey as his pretty little vessel.

Ben would be nobody’s prisoner. He ducked below Trudgen’s next blow, instead stabbing the larger man in the belly. Trudgen gurgled and fell to his knees, his weapon falling to the ground.

Kris-fer charged, spear at the ready. Ben sliced down then up, splitting the spear’s shaft and then her helm.

Only Kuruk remained standing. Kuruk fired now that the melee had ended, shots veering wide as Ben directed his concentration on the sniper. He raised the stormtrooper’s rifle and took a single shot, all he needed.

Ben took a deep breath. All around him the bodies of his Knights moaned, died, writhed. Beyond that the cultists of the Sith Eternal sought to detain him. He charged, weapons readied, to the throne room. To the heart of the Sith Empire.

He found Rey standing alone before the Throne of the Sith, Palpatine hanging from his machines as he begged with crumbling claws for her to finish the deed. To sacrifice him, to accept his spirit into her. To accept the Throne that was her birthright.

Something held her back.

And Palpatine laughed.

Palpatine hadn’t known about the dyad bond. Snoke hadn’t known. The ghost of Vader hadn’t known. None of the voices ever knew.

Only Revan.

Now Ben realized how much of an advantage that knowledge really had been as Palpatine figured it out, tore that advantage away, twisted the prophecies, and began to feed.

“The life force of your bond, a dyad in the Force,” Palpatine crowed. “A power like life itself. Unseen for generations. And now the power of the two restores the one  _ true  _ **_Emperor_ ** !”

The bond began to unravel. Red threads frayed and snapped. Water boiled to steam and tar burned. Ben felt himself bleeding into the Force, pain ripping through him as his soul shredded, tore, stretched as they both screamed and screamed and…

...and Palpatine cackled.

The pain ebbed, fading to a dull ache as Ben and Rey reached for each other. The bond snapped back into place as they touched, energy flowing freely between one another. They moved as one as they stood, sabres raised. Palpatine would not take them both. Bonded like this, a single strike from both would destroy the Sith as surely as it destroyed the Jedi.

They both knew this, felt this. The past would die here. Now.

Palpatine sneered. “Stand together, die together,” he mocked, separating them again. Ben dangled from his neck before a great shaft to the planet’s core. He could feel the dark side vergence pulsing beneath him, the beating heart of the dead world.

And then he fell.

He could have fallen forever. But Snoke did this to him once before and he’d caught himself then too. Instead he changed his fall, not down but over. He landed badly on a rocky outcropping a few dozen meters below the temple and began to climb.

Pain lanced through his side where the ribs felt bruised. One ankle refused to bear weight even as he pulled himself upward. His head throbbed with the rush of blood that wasn’t his own. His skin tingled in time to the bolts of Sith Lightning that pierced the sky above. And then…

Ben screamed in agony and nearly let go. His feet slipped, leaving him to dangle by grasping hands over the planet’s empty core as his veil tore, as his soul bled out of him in fat black drops.

He couldn’t feel her.

He couldn’t feel Rey.

There were no red threads. Only black tar that grew thicker and thicker around him, trapping him in place, squeezing him like the coils of a giant snake. He could barely breathe through the pain as he threw himself over the ledge onto solid ground and crawled toward her.

Where her dead body lay.

The Throne of the Sith was in ruins. Palpatine dead. The Sith Eternal cultists fled into the darkness.

It was over.

Sith, Jedi, it was over. All of it. Gone.

He collapsed next to her body. Exhaustion, pain, everything weighed on him. It could all end here. The Force wouldn’t begrudge him that, would it? They’d done everything it asked. There were no more Force users left to rule the galaxy. Jedi, Sith, everyone dead or worse. It could end right here…

Instead he gathered her body in his arms, laid a hand on her belly, and focused. He poured everything he had into her, energy, soul, Force, everything he was bled through the bond into her. First a drip then a trickle then a flood of power into her, willing her to wake up.

He gasped as he felt her hand on his.

Rey awoke and the pain faded. Ben smiled in relief, in joy, in love as she kissed him. Her lips felt like fire, heat and flame and so much life flowing between them.

“Ben,” she whispered. “Let’s go home.”

Ben shook his head. They couldn’t go home, not now. He wouldn’t let go of her, his hands desperate as he tangled his fingers in her hair.

The two that are one.

Two bodies. One soul. And now, one life shared between them. The realization passed without words and neither knew who thought it first.

_ If we let go one of us will die and the other won’t live long enough to escape. We’re trapped here. _

Rey looked on in horror as Ben’s expression turned from joy to despair.

He’d saved her. He’d saved both of them. But only so long as they touched.

Now what?

Her hands ran down his shirt. He tested the strength of the bond by moving his own hands to her clothed shoulders and the world grew dark. Desperation brought his hands back to her face and his vision cleared.

“We have to keep touching,” Ben said. “Skin to skin. We won’t survive without it.”

“We won’t survive here!” Rey protested. She had a valid point. They couldn’t stay here on the floor of the Sith Temple with cultists running around and a space battle directly above.

Ben reached down with one hand and pulled his shirt off. He noticed she didn’t hesitate, her hands going right for the skin of his bare torso as he tossed the garment away.

He purred at her touch. The burn of her skin against his was heavenly against the agony of existing alone. He held her close and closed his eyes.

“We succeeded,” Rey said, tucking her head under his chin. “That’s what matters.”

Ben laughed as he remembered his own words. “Let the past die,” he said. “Kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become who you were meant to be.”

Rey laughed, laughter that twisted to sobs as she burrowed into his bare neck. She pulled at her own clothing, unraveling her tunic and tossing it aside. “You were right,” she lamented. “Kylo Ren was right.”

“I doubt I meant this.”

Rey hissed as she felt his broad hands on her bare back. He pulled at her breast band, releasing her from its confines. She stripped the wraps and bands from her arms and pressed against him, gasping at the sensation. “Ben…”

Ben rolled over, letting her drape over him as he took the brunt of the cold stone floor himself.

“I should have taken your hand then,” Rey admitted. “I should have taken Ren’s hand when I had the chance.”

Ben ran his hands through her hair, untying it from the silly three-bun bind. “I would have liked that.”

“And now we’ll never get that.”

Ben felt her tears against his chest. He ran his hands over her bare spine, petted her hair, drew her up for a kiss. She gripped his shoulders, pressed herself against him as the bond between them hummed and sang and kept singing.

Ben wasn’t sure which of them felt it first. He and Rey looked at each other, thoughts going through each other’s heads. Images, flashes, a feeling of what might happen if…

Rey shook her head and tried to pull away. She got to her knees before falling back against him, his arms wrapping around her.

“Would it be so terrible?” Ben asked.

Rey closed her eyes and let herself be held.

He snaked a hand down to his pants and tore at the bindings. He used the Force to push clothing off and away, to slide his boots off, to entwine his bare legs around her clothed ones.

Rey pulled herself away from the heat of his embrace, trying again to find a way out. Instead she found herself wrapped in his fire, his touch burning her and she couldn’t get enough. She slid up his body, shimmying her own clothes off. Reality warbled as one of them, as both of them, manipulated the Force around them.

Ben took one long look at her, the last chance he would ever get. She gazed back, memorizing his face with fingertips and eyes.

Then he pulled her down for one last kiss.

One of them moaned, the other screamed as they both burned and drowned and surrendered.

The Force would not be denied.

*****

The Throne of the Sith lay empty, blasted to rubble. The amphitheatre stood empty, cultists hiding from their crisis of faith. The skies over Exegol were empty, the Resistance long gone as the wreckage of six Xyston-class Star Destroyers littered the surface around the Temple. The night sky was full of dust and cloud and ash, the fires of the Sith burning out for the very last time.

The Jedi were dead, nothing left but ghosts and legends.

The Sith were dead, nothing left but a cult groping and grasping blind in the darkness of an empty galaxy.

No heroes. No villains. Only people.

And alone in the Temple of the Sith one being opened their eyes. They sat up surrounded by the wreckage of battle, alone with their thoughts. Hands roamed over a new body, a new reality, a whole new meaning, and they hugged themselves, laughing in utter joy.

The pain was gone. For the first time in their lives.

The pain was gone and they were free.


	15. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV has changed to a Third Person Generic. Kylo Ren isn't available to be my unreliable narrator anymore.
> 
> Death ahead. I watched the Ben Solo vs Knights of Ren battle via the multitude of gifs available and yeah, Ben stabs two dudes. Ushar from behind, Trudgen in the front. I analyzed the footage and consulted anatomy texts and came up with this.

“He took me!” Ap’lek ranted. “Palpatine took me and there wasn’t anything I could do!”

“Palpatine took all of us,” Vicrul snapped. “Shut up!”

“You shut up!” Ap’lek screamed. “Nobody takes me like that, you hear me! Nobody!”

“Kylo takes you like that all the time,” Kuruk said.

“But that’s okay!” Ap’lek curled up on the floor. “It’s okay when Kylo does it. He’s allowed to. He doesn’t hurt me. He doesn’t make me do things. This hurt! Palpatine, he made me… he made me...

The Knights of Ren were in disarray. The wan light of Exegol’s dead star reflected down into the depths of the temple. The bodies of Sith Eternal cultists littered the floor along with broken weapons, shattered lives…

...Trudgen’s body.

Ushar wasn’t much better off. The sabre wound tunneled through his right abdomen, the blade burning the diaphragm and searing the liver. Only the fact that this was a lightsabre wound, clean and cauterized, kept Ushar from bleeding out into Exegol’s dust.

Trudgen Ren had died a good death. The sabre stabbed him in the front before sliding down, cutting through the organs in the belly. He’d faced his death with his weapon held high and took it bravely. Mind controlled or not, he’d earned that death.

The others were less lucky.

“We should try and get back to the _Finalizer_ ,” Cardo said. His face and chest bore burns from his own bandolier of grenades popping while he wore them. Only his ability to shape the charges as they burned had saved him though he worried about the vision in his right eye. He couldn’t open it and didn’t want to try without a medical droid at hand.

“And do what?” Kris-fer demanded. Her face was split by a sabre wound that had shattered one of the red stones she wore in place of her missing eyes. It stung but would heal. “No, really, and do what?! Unless you think the First Order somehow survived this. Or, better yet, you believe Hux capable of retaking the  _ Finalizer _ from Imperial cowards.”

“If Ushar is to have any chance we need to get him to the  _ Finalizer _ ,” Kuruk said.

“He won’t last,” Vicrul sneered.

“So you’re denying him a good death?” Kuruk accused. “Kylo wouldn’t do that to him, why should we?”

Ap’lek sat on the dusty stone floor of Exegol’s temple complex. The others may have their helms removed, the better to shout at one another, but he didn’t. His own breathing echoed in his ears as he constantly felt out in the shadows, in the Force, for anything that might be approaching. The idea of Palpatine coming for them again, making them dance like puppets on strings, terrified him.

“We still have the  _ Night Buzzard _ ,” Vicrul said. “We don’t have to rely on the  _ Finalizer _ anymore. We can go wherever we want!”

“Under whose lead?” Cardo asked. “Yours?”

“Why not?” Vicrul asked. “I can lead.”

Ap’lek gasped as he felt something coming toward them. The shadow felt… wrong somehow. Like something he knew and didn’t know, something twisted and shining and light and dark and Gray all at once. “Guys…” he called.

“You dropped like a bitch as soon as you were hit!” Kris-fer snapped. “You let Kylo ignore you by playing dead.”

“Challenge me then,” Vicrul warned.

“I won’t even need my weapon,” Kris-fer growled as she pounded her fists into her hands.

“Someone’s coming!” Ap’lek shouted. “Can’t you feel that?!”

“You’re imagining it,” Cardo said.

“No he’s not,” Kuruk said, cradling his blaster-shot arm. He turned his Sight into the shadows that approached, trying to unravel the swirling power he Saw into something that made sense.

“Come at me then,” Vicrul roared, his scythe raised.

“No wait, I sense it too,” Kris-fer said.

Vicrul didn’t take her brush-off well, instead charging at her. She ducked the slice of his blade and lashed out with a punch to his jaw. She grabbed his neck and yanked, throwing him to the floor with it.

A figure approached. They stayed in darkness, shying away from the wan white light of Exegol’s dead star.

“Kylo?” Ap’lek asked hopefully, unfolding from his tight ball on the floor.

Kris-fer cocked her head as she considered the shadows in front of her. The shadows felt familiar and unfamiliar, a Force both known and unknown, trusted and not and trustworthy and maybe and… “That’s not just Kylo,” she realized.

A pale figure in ill-fitting black clothes shifted uncomfortably in the darkness.

“What… happened?” Kuruk asked. “Kylo, what happened in there?”

“Palpatine is dead.” The voice that issued from the pale figure felt wrong somehow, like it had been two voices merged then split then merged and yet somehow both sources could still be distinguished in the single sound. “The Sith are destroyed. It’s over.”

“And the girl?” Cardo asked.

“Your shadows were bonded,” Kris-fer accused. “Both of you. One dies without the other, remember? Don’t tell me ‘Palpatine’s dead’ and leave it at that. What happened? Where is Kylo Ren?”

The figure took a deep breath and stepped into the wan white light.

From here they looked like a stranger. Black hair fell wild against pale skin. Eyes so brown they might have been black. Lips bitten in worry, as though fearing rejection. Ill-fitting black clothing, Kylo Ren’s own clothes, tied to better fit their form with pale strips and drapes of fabric. The twin Skywalker sabres clipped to a belt that hung low on hips neither narrow nor voluptuous.

One by one the Knights of Ren realized who or perhaps what stood before them. This wasn’t Kylo Ren or Rey of Jakku. This was something different.

Hadn’t Kylo once confessed he was only half a shadow, half a person, half of a dyad bond? This was what that dyad bond became when allowed to run its full course.

“Who are you then?” Kuruk asked. “Are you our leader or our enemy?”

The dyad looked down and sighed. “Rey died,” they admitted. “Kylo gave up his own life to bring her back. But it wasn’t enough. This… happened. Your leader and your enemy are both dead.”

“Do you have a name, then?” Ap’lek asked.

The dyad looked confused, like they hadn’t thought about it yet.

“We Knights of Ren choose our own names,” Cardo said. “You could choose your own, too.”

The dyad thought about it. A name unconnected with anything they’d been before. A name the galaxy wouldn’t associated with either of their pasts. They regarded the Knights of Ren and Kylo’s memories assaulted them. Nothing like the dark monsters the Resistance claimed them to be, not even the savage beasts of First Order propaganda. Lost and wandering Force-users, untrained in the ways of their own shadows, the lot of them eking out livings as they could with the skills the Force gave them. And now leaderless. Kylo would not leave them behind to suffer his mistakes, Rey began to see the treasure buried within like prime salvage. Yes, this was an option.

They had a ship. Better yet, Kylo had taken advantage of events. One tempted the other with ideas, a future, a _plan_.

“Kira,” they said. “Kira Ren. Unless you’d rather turn us away.”

“Well, Kira,” Cardo said. “Welcome aboard.”

“Just like that?!” Vicrul demanded. “I demand they prove themselves first! If there’s two of them in there they’ll need two good deaths.”

“Trudgen Ren and Emperor Palpatine,” Kuruk said.

“Unless you’re volunteering a challenge,” Kris-fer tempted.

Vicrul growled and lowered his weapon.

“Thought so,” Cardo sneered.

“We should get back to the _Finalizer_ then,” Kira suggested. “Kylo left Hux in a position to retake it from Imperial infestation.”

“What about your little Resistance friends?” Kuruk asked.

Kira sighed and looked away. “The Resistance... won’t miss Rey,” they said. “We doubt they’ll even realize she’s gone. Besides, she never told them about the dyad bond. We’d be…”

“Executed?” Kris-fer asked.

Kira shrugged, dejection crossing their features. "Maybe."

“Well then,  _ Finalizer _ or wandering,” Kuruk suggested. He thought for a moment, an idea coming to him. “Wandering in the  _ Finalizer _ ?”

Cardo grinned. “This will be the biggest kriffing ship we will ever take.”

The Knights of Ren collected the remains of their weapons. With Kira’s help they were able to Force-lift Ushar’s unconscious body out of the temple complex.

Trudgen remained where the Knights laid him, his warcleaver carefully placed in his cold dead hands, his helm on his chest, his eyes closed in peace.

*****

The _Night Buzzard_ approached the rendezvous point. The _Finalizer_ hung like a fat bird hiding behind the tenuous drape of a nebula’s gas lanes. EM interference from the nebula kept the _Finalizer’s_ signature quiet, a crude yet effective form of silent running.

Kira Ren looked distastefully at the helmet in their hands. It represented so much that one of them despised and the other disliked. Still, it was a tool they needed. It was a tool they could ill-afford to toss away, like all the other salvage stripped from the TIE Scout and the Rebel X-Wing: food, parts, holocron... 

The  _ Night Buzzard’s _ comm chirped. “Incoming craft, identify yourself.”

“They know who we are,” Kuruk muttered under his breath. Something didn’t feel right.

“Kylo never should have trusted Hux,” Vicrul said. “We should leave.”

Kira slipped on the mask, letting the voice modulator change their voice to something the  _ Finalizer _ might remember. “This is your Supreme Leader,” they said. “We’ve returned from the slaughter at Exegol. Lower your defenses and allow us to dock.”

The  _ Finalizer _ didn’t respond.

“How skilled are you at evasive maneuvers?” Kira asked.

Kuruk hit them. “Shut up. I fly better than you.”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Cardo said.

“ _ Night Buzzard _ , you are cleared for landing.”

The Knights of Ren gave a collective sigh of relief as the  _ Finalizer _ gave them clearance. The transport ship allowed itself to be guided into the hangar bay, coming to rest next to so many unlaunched TIEs.

Unfortunately the welcome ended there. Stormtroopers leveled their weapons on the ship as soon as the hatch opened.

“Come out peacefully and you won’t be killed,” came the shout from the stormtrooper ranks.

On the ship, silent swearing and the promises of pain kept the Knights of Ren from charging out. Kuruk slipped on his helm and activated the noise cancellation to block all extraneous sounds. He crept to the open hatch, crawling on his belly in the shadows where he’d be harder to see.

The stormtrooper commander looked just like all the others, no difference in their armor to denote rank. Kuruk opened his Sight, looking for Paths in the Force. He focused on one, lined up the shot, and fired before rolling out of the reactive onslaught of enemy fire.

“Nice shot,” Vicrul said. He could feel the rising fear as the stormtroopers suddenly had no commander. He fed that fear, spreading it among the ranks outside, adding in a touch of hopelessness.

With that hopelessness spreading Kira stepped out into the smoke of spent plasma charges and activated both of the Skywalker lightsabres. Beneath Kylo’s helm, a borrowed cloak, and Vicrul’s miasma of terror, they cut a pathway through the formation and broke it, stormtroopers fleeing into the ship.

“We’re clear, let’s go,” Kira called.

“Wasn’t Hux supposed to take the ship by now?” Ap’lek complained.

“It’s a big ship,” Cardo admitted.

The corridors of the  _ Finalizer _ agreed with Cardo’s assessment, this was a big ship. Evidence of running blaster battles marred the bulkheads. An active coup was underway and stormtroopers roamed the halls looking for trouble or something that made sense. Ship-wide comm announcements begged the enlisted crew to stay in their bunks until order could be restored. 

“Bridge?” Kris-fer suggested.

“Imperial loyalists have taken the bridge! I repeat, Imperial loyalists have--” The comm message ended in a horrible burst of static and then nothing.

“Bridge,” Kira agreed.

The Knights of Ren looted weapons as they went, taking blasters and armor plates and random melee weapons along the way. Even with the seriousness, it was just another raid. Their biggest one yet.

*****

On the bridge of the  _ Finalizer _ , Colonel Regina had the traitors on their knees with their hands behind their heads. A smattering of Lieutenants, some Captains, and most shameful of all, General Armitage Hux. Colonel Regina had heard Hux was shot as a traitor already. Clearly he hadn’t been shot enough.

Captain Dopheld Mitaka laid on the deck and bled from where he’d been shot, the blaster wound to the shoulder not enough to kill him. He hissed at the pain as a stormtrooper kicked the wounded arm, using their foot to try and get Mitaka up onto his knees.

“At least kneel like you’re civilized,” Regina snapped, scowling.

“Imperial scum,” Hux spat. “Clinging to a dead past and a dead Emperor like he’ll save you. Now what? You’ve heard the holos, same as we all have. Exegol fell.”

“And you believe your vaunted Supreme Leader will come save you?” Regina taunted. “If the Emperor didn’t kill him the Resistance surely finished the job. Or did you even have a plan? Retreat to the Unknown Regions again to hide, lick your wounds like dead old daddy?”

Hux snarled, trying to throw himself at Colonel Regina. Stormtroopers held him back, forced him back onto his knees.

“I was going to give you all a chance,” Regina drawled. “Renounce the First Order and we might have a place for you. But that’s no longer an option. I need this ship and you’ll just get in my way. But I suppose we still have a use for you.” He gestured for the comms officer to implement the plan.

The bridge lit up in eerie blue and every holographic projector on the  _ Finalizer _ showed the scene. First Order officers knelt in furious defeat while the colonel slowly paced around them. “The Empire is not without mercy,” Regina said. “But there are rules that must be followed. These traitors beget a coup to topple the rightful leadership of this ship, of the Final Order, of every life aboard the  _ Finalizer _ . These traitors will pay the price for their actions. In return, all of you who followed their orders, you will all be spared. You all have a place within the Final Order, remember that. Remember that and be proud.”

Regina first stood behind Hux, drawing a blaster pistol. The muzzle of the blaster just touched wild red hair, resting at the base of Hux’s neck. “Any last words?” Regina asked.

“Go to Chaos,” Hux spat.

A blaster shot echoed through the bridge and Hux shuddered, mouth caught in a silent scream. That blast hadn’t come from behind him. Wait…

Colonel Regina fell to the floor, dead.

Something roared or maybe screamed as the Knights of Ren descended upon the bridge like a raiding party, led by the Supreme Leader wielding two blue lightsabres and Hux had never seen a more welcome sight in his life.

The battle was quick and fierce as the Knights engaged in wholesale slaughter. The bridge stayed that same eerie blue as the holoprojection continued unabated, as the entire crew saw the decimation of the Final Order. But inevitably it slowed as the fanatics died, the stormtroopers surrendered, and the bridge crew did their best to act like they only worked here, they weren’t with those guys.

Finally it stopped. Hux remained on his knees, too sore to get up. “My Lord, you have no idea--” He stopped when the Supreme Leader raised a hand for quiet and instead began to address the crew.

“The Final Order has been defeated. The Emperor is dead, by our hand. The thousand-ship fleet of the Sith Eternal lays destroyed on the surface of Exegol. All those who defected from the First Order to join the Sith Eternal fleet are also lost. Any attempt to rejoin or rebuild a ‘grand Sith Empire’ was a misguided delusion. 

“As of right now, the  _ Finalizer _ is all that remains of the First Order. As such, this ship will separate itself from galactic affairs. If the petty core worlds want to rule themselves, let them. Give them their freedom. Let them destroy this galaxy in the name of their vaunted Republic ideals.

“We are aware this is not what many of you envisioned when the First Order made its promises, or when the Final Order spun its lies. As such, any and all who wish to leave the  _ Finalizer _ will be given the opportunity. A planet will be found where you can all make your own lives. All those who wish to stay are welcome but be warned, if you choose not to leave you will not get this chance again. Until then, stay in your cabins. Remain calm. The situation is under control.”

The Supreme Leader cut the comm and the blue glow of holocapture faded. Hux cocked his head and watched as the Knights of Ren insinuated themselves among the bridge crew, subtly taking over the ship as they did so.

Hux hauled himself to his feet, still unsure on one leg. Even after time spent in the medbay the muscle still remembered it had been shot by that Resistance sadist and the burns pained him. He limped toward the Supreme Leader, taking in the rather complete lack of uniform. The helm was the same but the cloak was different. The gloves and clothes looked borrowed, taken from the other Knights of Ren and their own chaotic outfits. Stormtrooper pauldrons under the cloak filled out the silhouette but that meant…

“You’re not Kylo Ren,” Hux realized. “Who are you?”

The Knight pulled the helm away from their face.

Hux gasped. This was Kylo Ren but also… not. The same brown eyes, the same black hair, the same pale skin. But this was someone different, almost something more? It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. And then Hux felt a familiar pressure on his mind, the press of someone he knew against his thoughts. It… had to be… but it couldn’t be…

He didn’t know what was happening anymore.

The bridge spun and Hux let it, falling to the deck. It had been a long day.

*****

Kira kicked their legs as they sat on the medical table. The medical droid paused in its examination, waiting until they stopped fidgeting. Kira had the odd urge to apologize before stopping and letting the droid continue.

Not far away Hux was in the middle of an epic rant. “You have no idea what happened?!” he demanded.

The Knights of Ren clustered around another medical droid. Ushar lay on the table, the droid carefully repairing the wound in his liver. “We’re telling you what happened, Hux,” Vicrul said through gritted teeth. “Palpatine took our minds and made us fight Kylo to keep him from getting to the Throne Room on time. We failed. He killed Trudgen, almost killed Ushar, and incapacitated the rest of us.”

Kris-fer snorted but didn’t say anything. Bacta tape covered her facial wounds and the empty eye socket had a new glass bauble that looked disturbingly like a real eye.

“By the time we came out of it out steps the dyad here,” Kuruk said, gesturing to Kira.

“Kylo Ren and the Jedi Rey of Jakku labored under the influence of a Force bond for the past year,” Ap’lek said, looking at his own hands. It felt wrong that he was among the uninjured. Even his weapon was still intact. “Once Palpatine was dead and the terms of that bond finished I guess the Force… did this.”

Hux shook his head. He’d never trusted this Force thing, not even when it was being used to dangle him by his own neck. Especially not then. “Can the Force even do this?”

“Why not?” Kira asked. “The Force has done weirder. We’re not quite sure what but we’re sure it’s happened.

“And this ‘we’ nonsense,” Hux snapped. “Which one are you? Are you the Scavenger? Or the Supreme Leader?”

“Having to timeshare a body is pretty weird,” Vicrul agreed.

“Timeshare nothing,” Kira said. “And we’re not either-or. We can…” They looked down at their hands, grasping at nothing as they wiggled their fingers and felt their own strength. “We remember everything. Kylo’s life. Rey’s life. Stars, they were so…” They looked up, fear crossing their features. “We never want to be that alone ever again.”

The medical droid pulled away from Kira and gave its report. “Mastress Ren is a functional androgyne, an hermaphrodite. Both sets of organs are present.”

Kira gestured to the droid as though it proved their point. Then they realized what it had said. “Wait, what do you mean by ‘functional’?”

“Functional,” the droid said. “You have all of the organs necessary to both sire and bear offspring. Your form appears to be balanced between male and female function, traits, and physical appearance, capable of both.”

Kira blushed as Kris-fer leered.

“There’s a reason you started changing our propaganda,” Hux realized. “You insisted. You pushed for an androgynous appearance and you knew why. To prepare the First Order for this!”

“Kylo wasn’t sure it would be exactly this,” Kira admitted. “But something like it.”

The med bay door opened and a messenger came in. The enlisted boy handed Hux a datapad and visibly stared at Kira. Hux had to slap him with the pad to get the boy to leave.

“Clearly propaganda didn’t have enough time to work,” Kira said.

Hux gestured up and down at the former (current? never?) Supreme Leader. They sat on a medical table in their underwear, a breast band and a pair of briefs with a distinct male bulge. Not enough width to the shoulder, not enough curve to the hips, too many angles and too much softness under the skin. Just as the droid said, balanced between male and female, elements of both. There was an ethereal, alluring quality to Kira Ren that would forever be turning heads and catching eyes and this ‘dyad’ might have to just get used to it. Hux didn’t bother saying any of it, instead glancing at the datapad. “We’ve reached Batuu,” he said. “We can send down the defectors at your order, um…” He gestured again, grasping for something to call this new Ren.

“Mastress Ren,” the droid supplied.

“Fine,” Hux snapped. “Until you come up with something better, ‘Mastress’.” He stormed out of the med bay.

“That went well,” Ap’lek said.

Vicrul hit him.

Kira sighed and began pulling on their borrowed clothes. They’d need new ones, their old clothes were in pieces all across the galaxy. Something to think about once they dropped off the dissidents and got underway.

*****

Batuu had seemed like a good idea at the time. Ajan Kloss and the majority of the Resistance were a galaxy away on the northern expanse of the Outer Rim while Batuu lay along the southern border between the Mid Rim and the Unknown Regions. The entire Core lay between them, surely they could drop off those who wished to leave, empty some bank accounts, acquire supplies, and leave before anyone was the wiser.

How the  _ Finalizer _ ended up being chased by three Mon Calamari cruisers was anybody’s guess. Hux insisted the Resistance traced the bank records. Several Knights of Ren blamed Hux, after all he’d been a spy for the Resistance before and all they had was his word that he’d stopped.

Either way, hyperspace swirled around them while the sensor crew warned about the cruisers in pursuit.

The  _ Finalizer _ was in no shape to fight. Defections among the older officers had left leadership of the weapons, droid, and fighter sections in serious need of reorganization. The vast majority of the stormtroopers and most of the TIE pilots had all chosen to leave as well. Whole decks were missing their service departments. What had been a crew complement of well over 80,000 had fallen to a third of that, barely enough to keep the ship running much less fighting.

Which left fleeing their only option.

But fleeing wasn’t an option anymore either.

Armitage Hux scowled at the blue swirl of hyperspace, ignoring the pounding headache the sight gave him. Perhaps he should have left as well. Kylo Ren had obviously been insane by the end of it all and had  _ allowed _ himself to be transformed by Force witchcraft into this, whatever this being really was. All he had was their word that they used to be Kylo Ren and the Jedi Rey, was that enough? He couldn’t use or sense the Force or its magic, did he have any way to verify this dyad’s word?

The Knights of Ren hadn’t left the bridge since leaving Batuu. Normally they’d be in the gym blowing off steam or packing up the  _ Night Buzzard _ to take the fight to these Resistance cruisers. But this running away thing rubbed them wrong. It didn’t feel right to flee like prey animals until their predators finally caught them. But there might not be any other way out. 

Kira hummed as they overlooked the pits where the sensor crew collected and analyzed the multitudes of data that the computer couldn’t parse. The tiny ping of a hyperspace trace looked like so much background noise that the computer dismissed it even as a trained set of human eyes could see the distinct 2-2-1 pattern in the noise peaks.

Kuruk came to stand next to them. “I have an idea,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Do you see a Path out of this?” Kira asked.

Kuruk nodded.

Kira sighed. The nav crew looked tired, desperate, their maneuvers having done little other than given the Resistance cruisers a good chase. They had very little weapons crew left, a few turret operators and their main guns. Their TIEs were useless without pilots. Worse yet, holonet chatter was littered with word of Resistance strikes against First Order Star Destroyers. With the loss of the  _ Incinerator _ , the  _ Absolution _ , and the  _ Endless _ , the  _ Finalizer _ was now considered a rare prize with a bounty that rose at each loss.

“Do it,” Kira said.

“Please tell me you have some sort of plan,” Hux said.

“I have a plan,” Kuruk said. “I plan to get away.”

Hux raised his arms in exasperation and paced a circle, trying to dampen the urge to strangle someone.

Kira stepped behind Kuruk as he waved away the nav crew, cracked his knuckles, and reached up to the helmet he wasn’t wearing. He growled at the lack of helm and its noise-cancellation apparatus. Instead Kira placed their hands over Kuruk’s ears, blocking sound manually.

Kuruk took a deep breath and brought the  _ Finalizer _ out of hyperspace long enough to reorient then jump back in.

“Evasion hasn’t worked before, surely it’ll work now,” Hux snapped.

Kuruk closed his eyes, entering a shallow meditation. Not all Paths in the Force were obvious. Some of them required sifting through the galactic noise to find. Like this one.

Kuruk gasped and immediately slammed the console, dropping the  _ Finalizer _ out of hyperspace.

Terror rippled over the bridge, screams tearing at throats. The  _ Finalizer _ dropped out of hyperspace with its nose pointed directly at the heart of a red supergiant star. A few more seconds in hyperspace and the ship would have been destroyed by the gravity well. As it was the star seemed to grow, to expand as the ship barreled toward it at high speed.

Mon Calamari cruisers dropped out of hyperspace around the  _ Finalizer _ . Two behind and one…

One cruiser overshot the  _ Finalizer _ by several hundred million kilometers. A paltry distance in space but here, the star so close…

A radio scream issued from the comm system before the cruiser’s signal collapsed into static. They’d come out of hyperspace deep inside the star, far enough from the gravity well that they had time to scream as the star tore them apart.

Kuruk took a deep breath and pushed the engines as the two cruisers behind began to veer away.

“What in blazes are you doing?!” Hux screamed. “Pull up!”

“Can we fight back?” Kira demanded.

“What?!”

“Can we fight back!”

Hux looked around the bridge in dawning horror as nobody else would look him in the eye.

The nav computer began to light up with alarms. Warnings screamed. The computer began to outright refuse commands because of the proximity of the star before them. Kuruk reached up to turn the nav computer off, manually commanding the giant engines to fire at full power. He aimed the  _ Finalizer _ at the surface of that star.

Kira reached out with the Force to flip a switch on the comms computer. “All deflector shields to maximum,” they commanded. “All hands, retreat to the middle of the ship. Now!”

Hux clawed out for something to grab, something that wasn’t a fragile window or a crew member or his own grasping hands as the star grew closer, closer, filling the entire bridge with dull red light.

Kuruk pulled the engines, forcing the  _ Finalizer _ into a shallow curve, angling the ship’s great belly at the star as the photosphere engulfed them.

Alarms began to sound. Kira glared and the sensor crew merely turned the alarms off.

Great swirls of red and orange plasma surrounded the ship, casting the bridge in an eerie volcanic glow. That bridge sat quiet, all staring out at the deadly maelstrom around them. The last screams of the Resistance cruiser echoed at the back of terrified minds. Yet somehow they weren’t dead.

Hux raised his eyes in exhausted terror. Of all the ways he expected to die, this was not one of them. The convecting plasma all around him seemed oddly beautiful. He didn’t even mind the oppressive heat that crept in from outside. He looked over and saw Kuruk Ren still fighting the ship’s controls, forcing the  _ Finalizer _ into some sort of position as it used the star itself as an air-break. Kira Ren held their hands over his ears and they seemed to be concentrating so hard on something Hux couldn’t comprehend…

The  _ Finalizer  _ curved in its descent, into the atmosphere of the star. Pressure increased as it descended, a slow deadly increase that deceptively beckoned, almost welcoming the ship to drop further. Just a little further. Instead the ship slowly turned to point its nose back toward the surface that bubbled now thousands, millions, countless kilometers away.

“Now!”

Kuruk activated the hyperdrive as he pushed the engines to their limit, throwing the ship into hyperspace. Swirling reds and eerie oranges faded almost instantly to cool calm blue.

Hux dropped to his knees in relief as the bridge erupted in shouts, screams, cheers of utter triumph.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Kira shouted, pointing to the sensor crew.

The bridge went quiet again, this time rising anticipation turning the mood into something hopeful. After a moment, an eternity, far too long, the sensor crew had a good read on the data and an answer. “We’re clear! They’re not tracking us! They think we’re dead!”

Triumph returned as the entire bridge crew celebrated their lucky escape. They escaped three Mon Calamari cruisers without firing a single shot and also they flew  **through** a star! Nobody outside of children’s stories flew through a star and lived to tell about it, nobody!

Hux stayed on his knees, watching the blue swirl outside. He barely saw it, instead shuddered as adrenaline collapsed and the star’s heat fled his body, leaving him bereft. He saw Kuruk collapse against the nav console and the crew regain their station, turning the computers back on only to listen to the droid-like squeals of indignation. He saw Kira slump against a pillar, somehow they seemed just as exhausted. They’d just been…

and…

Armitage Hux shivered as he realized what must have just happened.

This was what the stories of magic  **meant** .

“Where to now?”

Kira waved an exhausted hand at the nav crew’s pointless question. “Drop out of hyperspace, get our bearings, then back in,” they said. “Stay off the normal hyperspace lanes. Get us to Fondor; we need to make sure the star didn’t fry anything important.”

“And after that?” Hux asked.

Kira smiled. “We have some ideas.” They hoisted Kuruk to his feet and both Knights of Ren left the bridge.

All eyes slowly turned to Hux for guidance. Hux merely got to his feet as hyperspace broke into individual stars and the empty void of space. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing would ever make sense again. As the ship turned and jumped back into hyperspace he wondered if he even wanted that sense, or if magic and miracles were better.

He didn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, a time jump for a formal epilogue. You don't think I'm going to leave the Resistance just floating around out there with no idea what happened, do you?


	16. Twelve Years Later...

General Poe Dameron sat in his office and scowled at no one in particular. It wasn’t his office’s fault. He normally liked his office. It was filled with gifts from all over the galaxy, all sent to him after the fall of the First Order. True, over time the number and extravagance of those gifts had tapered off. The last one he’d been sent was a plant, a small green thing with a stalk of little pink flowers that didn’t smell like anything, and that had been almost a year ago. The stalk of flowers had long since withered and fallen off, the plant merely sitting there as a small green thing on his desk.

At first he’d been ecstatic that he wouldn’t have to lead this mess of a government, there were politicians willing to do it instead. As time went on, however, the base politics of Coruscant began to grate on his nerves.

Even this planet didn’t help. The ecumenopolis that was Coruscant looked shiny and pretty here on the upper levels but below, where the sky gave way to an actual floor, the city was just as vile and corrupt as any smuggler’s den he’d worked out of.

Poe got up and moved to stand by the window. He was lucky, he had a view of something more than just the next building over. His view included the faraway spires of the abandoned Jedi temple. Professor Beaumont was supposed to be in charge of repurposing the building but after finding whole wings of little cubes the professor had been less than diligent and more than a little distracted. Worse, no enterprise would stay in the temple for long, something about nightmares and voices and things moving without being touched.

Maybe the Force was still strong in that place. Maybe that was why the most recent venture, a delivery service using the spires to launch small flying droids, had recently filed their intent to breach their lease and leave Coruscant entirely.

To be honest, all that movement and the noises sounded like something Rey might have done once.

Rey.

Poe hadn’t thought about Rey in years. At least, he hadn't thought of the girl in years. Instead he thought of the war hero nearly every day. They’d all told the story about the Last Jedi, Rey of Jakku, who rose from nothing on a desert world. She learned the Force, decimated the First Order, destroyed the Emperor, and then disappeared into the Force the same way all the other Jedi had. That was the pretty story the Resistance told the galaxy. That was the pretty story told on the Senate floor. That was the pretty story that made Professor Beaumont look ill and excuse himself from the conversation.

That was the story Finn insisted on.

Poe sighed. Finn had done well for himself. He’d been the one to set up the Stormtrooper Reintegration Program, and no it wasn’t ‘reprogramming’ or ‘reeducation’ and he would get into a fight with anyone who said otherwise. Former stormtroopers now served on most vessels, civilian and otherwise. There was some pushback from some older members of long-lived alien races, something about an ‘order 66’ whatever that meant. But all psyche evals showed the former stormtroopers to be fine and productive members of society and without a Force-user to pull the thoughts from their heads they weren’t going to get much more sure than that.

Poe watched the trace of speeders below his window, the constant lines of traffic through the city. 

No, he hadn’t thought about Rey in ages.

It still hurt to think about all those they’d lost.

*****

In the end there hadn’t been much that needed rebuilding and that suited Rose Tico just fine.

When the First Order decided to come in and mess up a place they tended to mess it up so hard it was easier to let the scavengers have it. Or worse, there would be nothing left. Like the Hosnian System.

Over a decade on it still didn’t seem real sometimes. The First Order was gone. Over with. Defeated. They rose from the Unknown Regions as a terrorist organization with one dark Jedi and a superweapon, became the controlling force in the galaxy, faded to a collection of desperate Star Destroyers clamoring for relevance and now there was nothing left of them.

Almost nothing.

Pesky rumors on the Outer Rim continued. They had ever since the  _ Finalizer _ chucked itself into a star to avoid capture. People kept seeing the thing.

Reports were investigated. The most anyone ever found of the  _ Finalizer _ were stories.

Odd signatures in hyperspace far from the normal hyperspace lanes.

Drunken merchant tales about the one time they’d accepted an invitation to a private market and found themselves whisked away to the  _ Finalizer _ where time meant something entirely different and that’s why they were three months late on their rent, honest.

Stories from junk dealers and slave traders about dark cloaked beasts rising out of the night to steal their child-slaves, never to return.

A beautiful woman, or was it a man, who wielded a staff with a magic yellow blade. An Alderaanian seamstress insisted she saw this person once and it was definitely a pregnant man because every good tailor finds themselves that close to their client at least a few times per session.

And yet nothing official.

The bounty for the  _ Finalizer _ remained open.

*****

Finn managed to walk out in a dignified manner toward the freighter that had parked on the landing pad. The pad was technically a private pad meant for Republic Military business but with the Republic demilitarizing yet again there were few vessels that used this pad.

Besides, the freighter was well known to him and most of the Republic Military. The  _ Millennium Falcon _ had that kind of effect.

Chewbacca stepped off the  _ Falcon _ and held his arms out for a hug. Finn left his dignity behind him to catch up later as he ran up and threw his arms around the wookie. Chewbacca trilled in joy at the greeting, rubbing Finn’s head where the hair was too wiry to grow in lush like his own luxurious fur. Finn laughed at the gesture and at the comment, the same one Chewie had made about his hair for years now.

Mechanical shuffling behind Finn drew Chewie’s attention and he trilled at the droids. C3PO and R2D2 never failed to follow some member of the old Resistance around, same as they’d never left Luke and Leia’s sides during the Rebellion.

“So what brings you back here?” Finn asked.

Chewbacca chirped and trilled, roared and snuffed.  _ I have a lead on the  _ _ Finalizer _ _. I trust this lead. _

Finn sighed and buried his face in Chewbacca’s fur. “Not more of this,” he grumbled. “Chewie, it’s over. The First Order is gone. We can move on with our lives.”

Chewbacca growled.  _ You can move on. I can’t. _

“Chewie please--”

Chewbacca shoved Finn back and roared, snarled, pawed at the air in despair.  _ Do  _ **_NOT_ ** _ ‘please’ me, Finn-human-stormtrooper! Your world was not destroyed by this war, you have no world! You do not see the shame in your kin-cub-mate-pack eyes as they paw-dig at the barren-dead trees! I have spent an entire short-blind human lifespan on this war and it has not ended! Not for me. _

Finn got to his feet, sparing a glance to the edge of the floating platform. The city floor below was kilometers down. It didn’t matter at that moment that the edge was a hundred meters behind him, it felt too close.

Chewbacca growled long and low.  _ You can move on. Move on with your own short-blind life. I need to know what happened. I need to know my kin-cub-mate-pack will be safe. _

Finn backed away even as the droids approached as though nothing untoward had happened. “I need to talk to people about it,” Finn said, not looking at Chewbacca. “I can’t just…” He didn’t complete his thought, instead leaving the platform and the  _ Millennium Falcon _ sitting bereft.

C3PO finally shuffled up to greet Chewbacca, oblivious to the emotional turmoil puffing the wookie’s fur. “Chewbacca, it is so good to see you again,” 3PO crooned. “R2 missed you as well. He says the political climate is too reminiscent of the Republic’s decline and wishes to join you in your mission. I, for one, find the effect of the political climate fascinating though its effects on Master Poe and Professor Beaumont has me worried R2 may be right.”

Chewbacca huffed at Finn’s retreating form.  _ I fear you speak truths. _

_ I fear the humans have learned nothing from their wars. _

*****

“Have we learned nothing?!” Poe demanded.

He hated addressing the Senate. At least this was only a holocomm chat, his hologram being broadcast into the Senate chambers directly. If he’d had to look at the entire Senate and all those bored, bloated, bureaucrats directly he’d end up saying something rash. Instead the only hologram he was forced to converse with was Chancellor Lando Calrissian.

Unfortunately that didn’t make Poe’s job any easier. If it truly were just himself and Lando they could hash it out as old friends, debate the issue over beers in a cantina corner like real people. Instead Poe had to put on an act, one that was rapidly unraveling.

The Senate was insisting on their foolish, short-sighted, ill-conceived demilitarization plan. Again.

“With all due respect,” Poe continued. “The last time the Senate demilitarized the New Republic it was conquered in less than a year by a group of terrorists with 3 dozen ships and a rogue planet.”

“General Dameron, I remind you that ‘rogue planet’ destroyed the Hosnian System,” Lando warned.

“Chancellor, there was a time when Republic ships blotted out the skies over Coruscant,” Poe said.

“Yes, and they called themselves an Empire. We are not that.”

“I’m not saying we are! Or that we should be. But there has to be a middle ground between Imperial supremacy and submissive pacifism!”

“General Dameron, the Senate sees no reason to maintain a strong Republic military,” Lando said with a sigh. “The First Order has been defeated. The Sith have been destroyed. There are no credible reports of threats from within or without the galaxy.”

“No credible threats?” Poe asked. He gestured wildly, not believing what he heard. Had Lando really gotten this old or had Senate politics merely broken him? “Is Hutt Space not still a thing? Have smugglers not been finding and exploiting old Imperial projects in the Deep Core? Tell me, Chancellor, have all of the Final Order Star Destroyers been accounted for? You were  **there,** you saw the sky filled with them, the wreckage on Exegol did not account for the fleet we saw. You were there, Lando!”

Lando sighed and looked away. “The Senate will take your words under advisement,” he said.

The hologram faded as the connection was cut.

“KRIFF!” Poe shouted, slamming his fist against a table. He spun around to the other good reason he wasn’t in the Senate Chambers to give his report. Whiskey wasn’t allowed in the Senate Chambers, he had no such restrictions on his own office. He poured himself a glass and downed it before seriously considering taking a swig from the decanter.

Someone had the temerity to knock on his door. “WHAT?!” he shouted.

It spoke to his mood that Poe didn’t feel sheepish when his assistant looked sorry that she’d interrupted him. “General, ah, you have, um, a visitor.” She stepped back to show the large fuzzy presence behind her then fled.

Poe felt better as Chewbacca trilled. “Chewie!”

Chewbacca lumbered into the room and enveloped Poe in a large furry hug. Poe felt himself relaxing despite the holocomm as Chewbacca ran his paws through Poe’s hair, fluffing his hair and grooming him in a proper Wookie greeting.

Chewbacca trilled and huffed, nuzzling Poe’s hair as he petted the human like he was kin.  _ Human nonsense making you red-dark-angry? _

“You could say that,” Poe said, voice muffled under Chewbacca’s fur. He pulled away and knew from Chewbacca’s purr that his hair looked properly big and ridiculous. “I need another drink, want one?”

_ That bad, hmm? _

“It’s getting worse,” Poe admitted. “The Core Worlds are trying to consolidate power  **again** and it’s stripping the Republic of its ability to keep the Outer Rim stable and secure. Old Imperials in the Outer Rim are telling stories to their grandchildren about how good things were under the Empire and now Rim worlds are turning fascist. So the Core decides demilitarization is a good idea because the Core Worlds all have their own private armies so they don’t have to worry about bandits or slavers or mercenaries. It worked so well the last time.”

Chewbacca trilled sounds of vague interest at Poe while leading the human to a couch. He petted the human’s hair and allowed the human to lean against him.

“Worlds on the Outer Rim are banding together into coalitions that mean nothing good,” Poe continued. “The Core Worlds are of the opinion that we should just let them go, as though those Rim worlds aren’t where the Core gets all its food, its cheap import goods, or basically all of its industry. Sure, the rich will be able to just  **buy** their way out of trouble but I’m not here to worry about the rich! I’m worried about everyone else. What happens when the people who keep Coruscant running can’t afford food anymore? We can’t just keep replacing everything with droids, where do the people go?”

Chewbacca kept petting. The cycles of human politics seemed so long when viewed from their own short lives but they really weren’t. Although, he knew better than most how terrible the dark periods of those cycles could be. The trees of Kashyyyk would take lifetimes to recover, proper Wookie lifetimes.

Poe allowed the maudlin to fade under the relentless assault of warm wookie fur. Soon he was breathing easier, the whiskey in its decanter less insistent in its call.

Chewbacca trilled.  _ I have something that might make you feel better _ .

“What is it?”

Chewbacca growled, though there was no threat in it. It was a low challenge, an invitation for Poe to join that growl, to add Poe’s voice to the threat that would be roared against their enemies.  _ Would you join me in a hunt? I have a lead on a Star Destroyer _ .

“Oh? Which one?”

_ The  _ _ Finalizer _ _. _

That piqued Poe’s interest. Everyone knew the  _ Finalizer _ had destroyed itself to avoid capture, flown full-speed into a star. Nothing could survive inside a star. That hadn’t stopped the stories or the sightings. Of course, since the most credible sightings came from the least credible sources none of them had been taken too seriously. After twelve years it was assumed the  _ Finalizer _ , if it had survived, was lost somewhere in the Unknown Regions or had fallen prey to some terrible fate in Wild Space. 

Otherwise some First Order remnant would have made their move by now.

Conventional wisdom forgot that it was almost 30 years between the fall of the Empire and the First Order’s initial attack. The  _ Finalizer _ had plenty of time to build up a new army and invade.

“Where is it?” Poe asked.

_ Kalepa, along the Outer Rim. Not far. My information’s only good for three cycles so if you decline I’ll go alone. _

“Three days? I can’t convince the Senate to get me a squadron ready in three days!”

_ I have done more with the  _ _Falcon_ _ than you have done with entire squadrons. _

“Yes, but, it’s the  _ Finalizer _ .”

_ Would knowledge of the Finalizer’s existence not solve your problem with this Senate? If they can ignore such a threat as the First Order… again… then perhaps they are not allies to keep. _

Poe considered it. A reconnaissance mission. He was never good with those, preferring to get in and do as much damage as he could. Beaumont was always much better with intelligence than he was. And Rose, in case sabotage could keep the  _ Finalizer _ in place long enough to get that squadron.

And Finn. Finn deserved the revenge.

“Yes. Yes let’s go.”

Chewbacca roared in triumph.

This would be a good hunt.

*****

The  _ Millennium Falcon _ dropped out of hyperspace over a small star system. A small orange star glowed before them, a smaller red star in the distance. The planets of the system hugged the orange star. The inner planet danced too close, tidally locked, its surface a gigantic orange eye of lava that never winked or glanced away from the star. The second planet was a dry and dusty desert world, wrecked ships dating back thousands and thousands of years dotting the surface in eerie patterns. The fourth planet was a fat gas giant with unremarkable moons, one covered in water and one covered in nothing good.

The third planet was inhabited. Kalepa, one of the galaxy’s ‘night markets’.

And, wonders of wonders, a Star Destroyer sat above Kalepa, above a large spaceport. A spaceport like that would be an excellent target for a Star Destroyer, the only point of egress on a known smuggler’s world, nobody would notice if the system fell off the grid.

Onboard the  _ Falcon _ , Chewbacca and Poe flew while Rose, Finn, and Beaumont all clamored to get a view.

“Kriff, kriff, kriff, okay I owe you a case of whiskey, but still kriff.” Finn looked out the cockpit window at the giant Star Destroyer hanging there as though it wasn’t a world-destroying monster.

Strangely enough, Kalepa seemed to respond as the spaceport below cleared dozens of ships to fly directly under and at that Star Destroyer. Small ships swarmed the  _ Finalizer _ , each darting about almost enticingly? The sight reminded Rose of a swarm of sweetflies all swirling around their hive. “I don’t think anybody’s attacking,” she realized.

“It’s a merchant swarm,” Poe said. “Remember Pasaana?”

Chewbacca growled in low huffing laughter.  _ I wonder if they ever got the smell out. _

“What about Pasaana?” Beaumont asked.

“Chewie had been captured and taken aboard the  _ Finalizer _ as a prisoner,” Poe explained. “We had no idea what to do then Rey--” The name caught in his throat.

“Rey made us stop,” Finn said. “The  _ Finalizer _ had started one of these merchant swarms. It was perfect timing.”

“Sounds too perfect,” Rose said.

“General Hux was a Resistance spy,” Poe said. “I think he ordered it to give us the chance to sneak on board.”

“Star Destroyers of the Imperial and First Order used to do merchant swarms like this to spread wealth and foster good will among the populace of small worlds like this one,” Beaumont said. He scowled at the scoffs all around him. “Dismiss it if you like but it tended to work. They’d buy whatever goods or foodstuffs or slaves the locals could part with solely to inject credits into the economy. Imagine you’re a poor farmer on a Rim world and the Empire comes by every year to buy your goods. Once the Empire falls and the Republic goes back to ignoring you you’re going to get pretty nostalgic for those Empire days.”

“The First Order continued the practice,” Finn said quietly. He looked down at his hands. “They bought us toys.”

“Wait, I didn’t think stormtrooper kids had toys,” Rose said.

Finn shrugged. “I had to give them up when I got old enough. Gave them to the younger kids.”

Rose wasn’t sure how to feel, the Resistance propaganda had been adamant about the lack of childhood the stormtroopers had. Now she was learning they had toys, friends? So many children in the galaxy didn’t even have that.

Chewbacca ignored the discussion behind him and eased the  _ Millennium Falcon _ into the merchant swarm. The  _ Falcon _ was an old freighter, it looked like it belonged there.

Unfortunately the hold was empty.

No matter. They weren’t here to trade.

*****

The  _ Falcon _ landed in the gigantic hangar on the  _ Finalizer’s _ belly. Around them dozens of other ships docked. Droids, local and First Order, began moving crates of goods from the holds of ships to the floor of the hangar bay. Human and alien merchants bantered in the din, comparing their goods and predicting what prices they’d get.

Poe stepped off of the  _ Falcon _ into… a marketplace. It was surreal, so much more surreal than the last time. The last time there were stormtroopers in full armor running around while swearing and trying to get TIEs moved up into racks to make room for the swarm. Now the TIEs were tucked away and the hangar was full of sound.

Colorful drapes of fabric covered crates to make stalls more appealing. One merchant with a tiny one-man ship laid out a carpet and began doing minor sleight of hand tricks while proclaiming loudly his ability to read fortunes in the Force. Two fruitsellers began arguing over the size of each other’s stalls, the resulting fistfight was broken up by a stormtrooper in scuffed armor wielding a… beatstick? Poe didn’t recognize the weapon, it wasn’t a blaster and it wasn’t anything he’d ever used or faced. 

Rose and Beaumont stepped out and both cooed in delight, both trying to run off into the market to look and touch and listen. Poe caught them both before they could disappear.

Finn slowly stepped out of the  _ Falcon _ . A market like this always brought back memories that he wasn’t sure he liked or hated. He half-expected to see his old Handler approaching, the imposing marm-like figure who always licked her thumb to wipe smudges from their play helms, who bought toys for the Cadre, who told them all stories at night and checked under the lowest bunks for scary monsters. But no, he didn’t see his Handler at all and he wasn’t sure whether that left him relieved or disappointed.

Chewbacca came out while C3PO announced he and R2 would stay on the ship. Chewbacca stood head and shoulders above everyone in this market and unfortunately that attracted attention. Not necessarily First Order attention but still unfortunate as the other merchants looked at the size of the  _ Falcon _ and the lack of goods being unloaded and began to talk.

“We’ve seen it, we should go,” Finn said, catching up to Poe. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.”

“You always have bad feelings about these things,” Rose said.

“And you trusted them when Rey had them too,” Finn hissed.

“Rey was a Force user,” Beaumont said. He looked around the market, wondering if it had been so long that none of the First Order remembered what they looked like. Or if they were simply being ignored. Or, more likely, if the figures in black meant something more. He could see them in the market around them, the Knights of Ren. They were here.

Small running footsteps broke the market and a giggling little girl ran past, followed by a man dressed head to toe in black, including his black mask and cloak. The flash of black stirred something unnerving, like they’d all seen him before. Laughter peaked as the man walked past, the girl tossed over his back.

Chewbacca gave a chirp of fright.

“What is it?” Poe asked.

_ That girl… _

Somehow the girl had escaped her captor and was again on the run. Though this time she didn’t pass by, instead running right into Chewbacca’s legs and hugging him around the thighs. She looked up with deep brown eyes, black hair and pale skin contrasting with each other. “Hi,” she said shyly.

Chewbacca sank to his knees, nearly taking the girl with him. She adapted, shifting her hug to his chest. Chewbacca wrapped his furry arms around her and wailed.

Half the market stilled as Chewbacca wailed in utter anguish. Poe, Rose, and Finn all looked around, trying to find some way to stop this, to make it less conspicuous, to do anything. Beaumont instead nodded as Cardo Ren approached with another futile attempt to reacquire the escaped little girl.

Through it all, the Shyriiwook cries echoed in the ears of all who could understand the language.

_ She looks just like Ben-Solo-cub. _

“Mara, your Mother wanted you to wait,” Cardo said. “Come back with me, child.”

The girl, Mara, pouted and set her jaw in stubborn protest. It did not help to dispel the resemblance. “I’m old ‘nuff.”

“You’re nine.”

“Yeah! I’m nine!”

Poe knelt down next to the little girl. He’d only seen Han and Leia’s son a few times but even he had to admit the resemblance. The girl did indeed look like a tiny Kylo Ren. “Your name is Mara?” Poe asked.

Mara nodded.

“Mara, who’s your father?”

“Don’t have one. I have a Mother. They won’t tell me how that works ‘cause I’m too young.”

Chewbacca snorted in disbelief as Beaumont blinked and glanced at Cardo. Cardo’s mask revealed nothing important, only old burn scars.

“You don’t have one?” Finn asked. “Do you have a Cadre then?”

Mara pouted again. “Not yet. The Knights say I’m too young to choose my weapon or my name yet neither. I should try lots and lots first then choose when I’m older. But I’m nine, I should be old ‘nuff for something!”

The answer was so far outside of what anyone expected that Chewbacca let go. Mara giggled and ran off again. This time Cardo was ready, grabbing the girl as she passed. A long trail of squealing ‘no’s and ‘not the tickles’ followed as he carried her off.

“Rey did have an unhealthy fixation with Kylo Ren,” Finn allowed. “I used to hear her talking to him in the middle of the night.”

“He ever talk back?” Poe asked.

“Not that I heard.”

“He did,” Beaumont said.

Eyes turned on Beaumont as the Professor took a deep breath. “I was never… entirely truthful about my reasons for joining the Resistance. I was sent to study Rey.”

“Study?” Finn asked.

“You mean ‘spy’,” Rose accused.

“Rey and Kylo Ren suffered under a mutual Force bond,” Beaumont said. “Lord Ren’s studies called it a ‘dyad bond’. I was sent to study Rey’s side of the bond and report back my findings.”

Poe growled. “I trusted you and you were a First Order spy?!”

“Lord Ren could see and hear through Rey’s eyes, he didn’t exactly need tactical information,” Beaumont snapped. “The same as she could see and hear through his. I’m sure she shared this information with the Resistance.”

Finn grabbed Beaumont by the tunic and lifted him off the floor. “How  **dare** you accuse Rey of that,” he growled.

“Because it’s true,” Beaumont said. “And she didn’t trust any of you with it.”

“Put the Professor down.”

Beaumont sighed in relief at the trio of figures in black robes, black armor, black masks. Their weapons were held at rest, though that didn’t mean much.

Chewbacca roared. He recognized those masks and those weapons. The one with the halberd had been present for his capture and imprisonment on this very vessel.

“Ushar, Ap’lek, Kris-fer,” Beaumont greeted.

Finn threw Beaumont at the Knights of Ren. He cracked his knuckles, daring these ghouls to come at him.

“You never told them?” Kris-fer asked, helping Beaumont up.

“It’s never come up,” Beaumont said. Then his own questions began. “Is it true? Is Mara really theirs? What happened? Was Revan right? You have to tell me what happened!”

“Do we now?”

This new voice was different. It sounded like two voices merged then split then merged again but the notes were familiar, all too familiar. That voice brought a chill to Poe, to Finn, to Rose and Chewbacca. Beaumont ignored the shiver up his spine and pushed behind the Knights to…

He fell to his knees. This was what the dyad had become. “My Lord and Lady,” he said, bowing his head.

Kira Ren stood behind their Knights. The black drape of a Knight of Ren was nowhere to be seen. Instead they were garbed in something sheer and soft and gray that looked almost Alderaanian in design. Their dark hair was long, worn in intricate twisting braids all pinned up. But most telling of all was the heavily pregnant belly framed by a drape of silver fabric and unbanded breasts.

Finn caught sight of Kira and couldn’t help his overwhelming sense of joy. “Rey? Oh Force it’s you, Rey!”

Rose grabbed Finn’s arm before he could go to them. She shook her head, tears of disbelief making her eyes shine. “Finn, that’s not Rey.”

Finn ignored her. This was Rey. The same dark hair, the same brown eyes, the same nose wrinkle, the same expression, even the same feeling in the Force! This had to be Rey, it had to. But… Rose was right. This wasn’t  **just** Rey, there was something else there. Something pale and dark and he recognized the second half of that voice from Starkiller. The scars on his back burned as he knew who stood before him even if he didn’t understand what. Joy quickly faded to something more like horror.

“After we defeated the Emperor Rey died,” Kria said. “Kylo Ren gave up his own life to bring her back. The Force wouldn’t allow either of us to die and so it did this.” Kira spread their arms to invite scrutiny. “This is what a dyad is.”

“Leia knew why I was with the Resistance,” Beaumont said, still on his knees. “Her last order to me was ‘tell my son I love him’. She knew. She knew everything.”

Poe had no idea what to say. Rose looked like she’d been deflated. Chewbacca’s fur stood on end but even he wasn’t sure if it was fear or challenge.

“You’re not Rey,” Finn spat. “You never were. I know Rey, she never would have allowed this!”

Kira snorted.

“The Force wouldn’t do this!” Finn shouted.

“And what do you know of the Force?” Kira demanded. “A few stories Rey told you? Fairy tales of magic and mayhem? The few shards of Jedi hubris still left over in their empty temples?”

“I know this isn’t right,” Rose whispered. “The Force wouldn’t do that. It isn’t right.”

Kira shook their head. “The Force has a will of its own,” they said, almost wistfully sad. “It’s what’s kept this galaxy in a cycle of endless wars for a hundred thousand years. Jedi Republics and Sith Empires, each one ruled by Force-users. At no point in galactic history has sentient life ever ruled itself free of the Force.”

“That’s not true,” Poe protested. “Leia--”

“Was a Force-user,” Beaumont realized. “When she was voted out of her position the First Order became a problem. Led by Force-users.”

Poe tried again. “The Emperor--”

“Darth Sidious and Darth Vader,” Kira said.

“The Republic before them,” Rose said hopefully. It was almost phrased as a question.

Chewbacca answered that one with a low mournful trill.  _ The Jedi were generals, peacekeepers, the right and left hands of the Senate. Palpatine was able to take over only because the Jedi began to pull back their control over the Senate. _

“And before that the Sith warlords,” Beaumont said. “The Old Republic with their own Jedi rulers. Rakata empires before that.”

“There are no more Jedi,” Kira said. “No more Sith. There’s only us and the  _ Finalizer _ .”

Finn felt a sudden wash of cold over his mind. He did not like the predatory smile Kira gave them all as they pronounced all other Force-users dead.

“Oh no, not dead,” Kira said, their smile growing somehow more sinister. “We find them. We find them as they grope blind and untrained in a galaxy that refuses to understand them. We give them a choice.” They raised their hands in a gesture of welcome, though it only made the smile worse. “Come to us. Come to us and we’ll train you. We’ll teach you the ways of the Force. We’ll teach you to embrace the shadows of your true self, light and dark and everything in between. But should you come with us, you will never see home again.”

“You steal them?” Finn demanded, horror plucking at his mind. “Like stormtroopers!”

“Like the Jedi did their padawans,” Kira purred. “Like the First Order did their stormtroopers. Force-users have always taken tithes of unwanted children. We take the abandoned, the lost, the wanderers and we teach them the power of their own shadows.”

Chewbacca keened as he glanced around the hangar bay. Suddenly this place didn’t seem like just a market. There were too many children running around. Too many creatures cloaked in black, drifting like armored shadows among the stalls. The merchants seemed to grow languid as the market progressed, almost spellbound in their repetitive movements.  _ We need to leave _ .

Beaumont got to his feet, making a decision. “Maybe you should leave,” he said.

Kira glanced back at him.

Beaumont bowed his head. “If the Lord and Lady would have me, I’d like to stay.”

“Still a traitor,” Poe spat. “Stay here then.”

“We would also offer a place to you, Finn,” Kira said.

Finn shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

Kira glanced at their Knights, letting the three of them take control of the temptation.

Ap’lek and Kris-fer used the shafts of their polearms to subtly separate Finn from the others. Ushar left his greatclub resting on his shoulder.

“We all feel it,” Ap’lek said. “There are shadows about you.”

“You’re Force-sensitive,” Ushar said. “You never said anything before. Didn’t want anyone to know.”

“After you felt Rey die you figured nothing would ever come of it,” Kris-fer said. “You gave it up. But it’s not gone. Never gone. Never left.”

“They’re still your shadows,” Ap’lek said. “We can coax them out. Find out what color they are. Teach you how to use them, control them, how to be yourself.”

“It’s all you’ve ever wanted, isn’t it?” Kira said. “To be yourself. To remember who you were, to become who you were meant to be.”

“We can give that to you,” Ushar said. “All you have to do is stay.”

Finn watched this strange display around him. It felt too much like he was surrounded by giant birds, their great black wings trying to envelop him. He  **was** Force-sensitive and it was something he’d given up after feeling Rey die. For one terrible moment he thought about getting that back, at letting himself learn.

But he wouldn’t do it.

Finn broke the phantom circle by stepping out of it, back to his friends. Chewbacca laid a possessive hand on Finn’s shoulder, engulfing the man in the strange smell of a frightened wookie.

The shadow of anger flashed across Kira’s eyes before fading to resignation. “Somehow we knew that would be your answer,” they said. “Think carefully, Finn, for you will never get this chance again.”

Finn merely let Chewbacca hold him while Poe and Rose stood between them and the black-clad Knights of Ren.

“This is not the last time you’ll see the  _ Finalizer _ ,” Kira warned. “This galaxy was never meant to be run by mundane hands. Your Republic will collapse under the weight of the Core Worlds’ hubris. It’s already happening, isn’t it? The Outer Rim will secede, the Core will starve, the Outside will invade, and when you’re at your weakest you will see us again. Only then will you know peace.”

The market changed, all eyes turning to the huddled group of humans and one wookie. Poe looked around for what had just happened; Kira, the Knights of Ren, the little girl, even Beaumont, they were all gone. Instead the market seemed full of merchants all staring in silent scorn.

“We should go,” Finn said quietly.

Chewbacca huffed quietly, almost a whisper.  _ Yes, we need to leave. While we still can. _

They all filed back onto the  _ Falcon _ and started its engines. Merchants cursed them as goods scattered under the force of the  _ Falcon’s _ engines, as the  _ Millennium Falcon _ fled back to the safety of the Republic.

*****

Once he had been a general.

Once he’d destroyed planets, brought bright death to billions of lives in a single cruel stroke. He'd killed exactly as the Force demanded, though he hadn’t realized it yet.

He had no shadow of his own. Instead he had this ship. Armitage Hux, commander of the  _ Finalizer _ , watched from the bridge as the  _ Millennium Falcon _ sped its way off into hyperspace. Soon the Republic would find out the  _ Finalizer _ still lived.

Hux scoffed at the idea. The Republic had found out about them before. It felt like a hundred times now that the Republic found out about them. Nothing ever came of it. The Republic would send a ship or maybe a small fleet to examine the world below only to find a smuggler’s den rich with goods and credits and no memory of where it all came from. His Mastress would make sure of it. They always did.

The Knights of Ren might even find themselves a few children to steal, like changelings spirited away by magic. Which, if he were honest with himself, was a correct description.

The door to the bridge opened and Hux felt the immense presence behind him. He sank to his knees, his adoration for his Mastress coming naturally now. Kira walked up to him and ran a hand through his hair. They even let him lean against them, let him nuzzle the soft silks covering their thigh as the bridge crews watched and envied.

Yes, once he had been a general in a great navy led by a Sith witch and half of a dyad. Once the First Order had tried to subjugate the galaxy through fear.

Now he was still commander of the  _ Finalizer _ . But there was no fear left.

Armitage Hux had no need for fear.

The galaxy would tear itself apart through their own fear and his Mastress would bring it together again with all the might and magic of the Force and its infinite shadows. The Gray Jedi would save the galaxy from itself and there would be peace. For the first time in galactic history there would be peace.

The Force would not be denied.


End file.
